As much as we’ve integratedtechnologyinto our lives these days, many of us understand very little about how it actually works. If updating and restarting my computer doesn’t solve the problems I’ve been encountering, I’m out of ideas. But thankfully, those of us who are less technologically savvy can always call upIT professionalsto find out what’s wrong with our devices (and toembarrass ourselves).IT workers on Reddit have beenrecallingthe most shocking and ridiculous problems they’ve ever had to solve, so we’ve gathered some of their wildest stories down below. If you’re a fellow IT worker, we thank you for your service. And if you’re not, these tales might make you even more grateful for the field that you are in!This post may includeaffiliate links.
As much as we’ve integratedtechnologyinto our lives these days, many of us understand very little about how it actually works. If updating and restarting my computer doesn’t solve the problems I’ve been encountering, I’m out of ideas. But thankfully, those of us who are less technologically savvy can always call upIT professionalsto find out what’s wrong with our devices (and toembarrass ourselves).
IT workers on Reddit have beenrecallingthe most shocking and ridiculous problems they’ve ever had to solve, so we’ve gathered some of their wildest stories down below. If you’re a fellow IT worker, we thank you for your service. And if you’re not, these tales might make you even more grateful for the field that you are in!
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Back when I first started ages ago, a woman called in and said “my mouse isn’t working!” I asked her if it was wired or wireless.“I don’t know! Why would I know that?““What do you mean? Is it wired or not? Is there a wire on it?““I said I don’t know! This isn’t my job to know it’s yours!“So I asked her if she picked it up and walked away, how far would she get.I was the one that got in trouble.
The unfathomable amount of CP that I have come across both professionally and independently repairing computers is breathtaking. From Mother to Grandfathers, cops to mechanics, youngsters to old folks.It’s pervasive and f*****g disturbs me.I have an in with one of the local PDs and drop a note each dime every time. No passes here. If I find it on your machine, so do the locals and the stateies.
I did IT in the mid 90s. I had a small vacuum cleaner I used to clean out dusty cases. One day one of the people I supported came into my office and asked if he could borrow it to clean out his home PC. I said sure and gave it to him. He then continued to stand there working up the courage to ask me something else. Noticing his dilemma I asked if there was anything else I could help him with. He, with a completely serious face, asked if the vacuum cleaner was going to suck the data off his hard drive. Now I, up to that point in my career, had never laughed out loud at a user but I couldn’t contain it. The relief on his face was priceless when I reassured him his data was fine.
Not wild, but ridiculous: I drove 40 minutes away to look at a client’s computer, who said the PC was not responsive. When I arrived, he said “Look” and pressed a key on the number pad. Nothing happened. I pressed Num Lock and drove 40 minutes back.A week later, the same customer said his computer was miscalculating formula amounts, so I drove there again. He says, “Look…I type in that I want a pint, and it prints out a formula for sixteen ounces.” After giving him an elementary math lesson, I drove 40 minutes back again and requested that he have his computer taken away.
I work with a lot of engineers, like literal rocket scientists. The number of really intelligent people who don’t know what simple things like “can you minimize that window” or “let me see your desktop” are is simply mind blowing. I am thankful everyday that Teams added the ability to take control of someone’s cursor.I feel like the more advanced a person’s specialized knowledge becomes, the more rapidly their general knowledge declines. Some kind of weird inverse correlation.
My colleague got a call from a customer who was a Pastor as he needed help with his computer. It was a weekend, and my colleague knew his machine name so he remotely logged onto it as he in parallel started calling him. Screen loads, and it’s playing lesbian p**n, on his work computer, in the church. Needless to say it was awkward as the pastor answered the call a few seconds later.
Drive to an office for emergency oncall service charging the client $400+ dollars an hour to plug the power back into a switch which their cleaning staff had knocked loose.
Someone recently called my helpdesk requesting that we clear the roads so she could get to work.“The sky is falling and waters in the way"Meaning"It’s raining really hard and the streets are flooded"As the IT helpdesk, of course there’s nothing we can do about that.
Got paid my on-site visit minimum of $375 to plug in a phone cord to a fax machine. The young front office person did no know what a landline was.
Other workers screen shot her windows screen, made it her background then moved her task bar off screen. She kept clicking start but nothing would happen.
Take literal magnets off of the laptop so that it would work again.
Lady from the office downstairs borrowed my bosses keyboard whilst waiting for a replacement.When hers arrived she washed the borrowed one in the kitchen sink and left it on the draining board to dry out.
Emergency flight from CA to GA because they were getting alarms on their new system, flew out at like 4am, got onsite at 9am, told to come back at 9pm. got a hotel, slept, came back onsite 9pm.Customer stated that someone used a cable from the PDU to log into system but plugged it in wrong when done. But they were no longer getting alerts.I looked at it, it was correctly cabled, apparently someone had noticed and put it back correctly.Left site and flew back home.23 hour day just to LOOK at a cable label… they probably got charged like $10k to have me go onsite if not more…
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I had repaired a printer at the big insurance company. On the bill I wrote “mouse removal - NC”. The client questioned my comment - “printers don’t have mice”! I responded “they’re not supposed to. The furry little guy is in the plastic bag next to the printer.”. Eeewww.
IT problems are human errors and it’s usually because something is powered off.200 dollars to drive 5 miles just to hit the power button is more common than you think,.
I was a solo IT department for many years.Had to run manual backups on sales people laptops.I run into a huge folder, check if it needs to be backed up.Turns out it was a st ton of pics/videos of the married sales guy and the young receptionist getting it on at a company event (the company used to get us all hotel rooms).I sat the guy down and said I found some st that shouldn’t be on company property. He turned white as a ghost. I said it’s all good if he deletes it/doesn’t do that again. So I never told anyone about it.I would’ve found a way to tell the wife if I hadn’t run into screenshots of their texts—the wife had recently found out about the affair. It was really messy, kids involved.
I had to remotely install a spyware program on a VP/CFO’s laptop because loss prevention was trying to gather information on him. The software recorded keystrokes, program usage, web history AND videos of what he was doing on the laptop.He resigned the next day after they found that he had a girlfriend in one of the company’s manufacturing plants in China. The guy lost a million dollar job for that. Probably lost his wife and home too.
Working with the Judicial system, it wasn’t uncommon to see photo / video evidence of child abuse or neglect. People do some really f****d up things to kids.
This wasnt at work but at a lan party. Had a guy in a CS 1.6 tourney had a system was constantly overheating and locking up. Opened it up to find it caked with dust. A few people split the job of cleaning it and I was given the cpu heatsink. I didnt have my tools and all I had was some plastic untinsels and with what was in the bathroom. The sink was too small to get the heatsink under it and the knife was not getting it off. So I just stuck the heatsink in the (relativly clean) toilet. All of the caked dust and gunk came off. I was able to shake it off, put it under the air dryer, apply some thermal compound on it and put it back in the machine. The other guys got the rest of the system cleaned up.I didnt tell him I flushed his heatsink in the toilet.
Got paged one night because of a data outage. Turns out one of our on-call response folks went into the server room, locked themselves in, and unplugged several machines. This caused several data outages, which caused a page and thus someone driving in to resolve it. This was a major military mission critical system and this guy thought the best way to get someone’s attention was to break a bunch of stuff.
I just flicked a defective screen back to life not 2 minutes ago. Like a small laptop screen that just would’nt turn on even after taking it out and putting it back in. Then I get uppity and flick it and boom…Actual craziest was a fired employee who was wildly underperforming coming to give back her laptop. I booted it up and she had a contract and payslips from the other company she was working for with our stuff. She was dumb as a rock and HR tore through her case…
Back when I worked as a help desk tech at a government facility- I was sent on a call to put in new desktop for the office manager as she hated laptops.I set an appt time up in outlook for her, block out an hour off her schedule and swing up there.There she is, a very large elderly office manager sitting in her desk. There under her desk is the tower I was to replace.I introduce myself. She backs her chair up about a foot and says “OK, have at it.” and powers off her system.I stand there looking at the one foot of space between her lap and the spot under her desk. “I am going to have to ask you to slide your chair back as I need to remove and replace the tower.” I state.She skootches maybe another foot back and blankly stairs at me.So, I hold my breath and go down under her desk. Thats when I notice the 10-12 filled pee bottles under her desk. Yes. Pee in old Gatorade bottles just tucked away under her desk.I ripped the tower out and said “I will be back ASAP I need to clone your hard drive.” and GTFO.I sent my intern to go install the new one.
As a consultant software dev, I got called into a client office on a Saturday to help fix a hardware issue because the regular IT staff was non-responsive (they sucked).We were changing a bad memory card on a server, and my boss asks me to unplug the top box. I was averaging about 90hrs a week so I was f*****g cooked, and I unplugged the wrong machine.This was a travel agency call center doing $1M/day and this machine was in the call center server stack. We freaked out of course, and my boss walked out onto the call center floor, quietly asking if everything was running ok LOL.Luckily it was a benign marketing server and everything was ok. Lesson learned, don’t let the software dev in the server room.
Had to spec out a state of the art, no limit small computer for the CEO. I give two options, one best in market skull logo on the front. The other not as good and no skull logo. I submit to my boss and he says CEO will probably never go for the skull one as it’s unprofessional. I look up a plate to cover and add that in.Like a $10k computer alone, 5k monitor.CEO went for skull icon one without plate cause it was best in market and skull looked cool.My boss wasn’t happy to be wrong.
I walked into the office one morning to my CEO asking me to follow him to his office. He pulled out a stack of paper, almost a full ream, of printed p**n from our network printer and asked me to find out who sent it.Back then, most of our office staff had their own desk printers. I assumed that this person had worked late and meant to print out these pics on his local printer. Our CEO only used the network printer near his office and gets to work well before everyone else. Obviously, dude was fired.
Hiding a “k*ll switch” in the code of a web application we had because my boss thought the customer would try to steal our code. Just to add, my boss never used the switch, but they did stole our code, I already left the company, but as far as I know there’s a lawsuit going on, I remember having to help my boss gather proof of it to share with the lawyers.
Explain to the Chief Technology Officer that having the prod server and its backup server sat next to each other, may well save cost on not having two data centers, but when that data center (also known as the stationary cupboard…) goes, it’s not such a money saving idea….
I used to work for a “non-profit” case management organization. Most of my end-users were case managers trying to take kids away from their s****y parents. All of them were issued laptops and cellphones. We tracked these devices closely. I picked up a ticket from this one girl who lost her phone. When she opened the ticket she CC’d her manager so i thought it was only appropriate to reply all, with the last known location.After sending them the address i got curious and plugged it into google. It was a well known adult toy store. The girl eventually replied, “I DID NOT GO TO A SEX SHOP!”.
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Indrė Lukošiūtė
Gabija Saveiskyte
Work & Money
