1

OK… seriously. Have you ever had a user come to you and say anything that actually scared you?

It happened to me yesterday afternoon. The CFO of my company, and the #2 guy, who is also my bosses’ boss, and who effectively signs my checks, came into my office.

“OK, please don’t KILL me…”, he said with a genuine look of worry on his face. Now, I do like working for him, he’s a pretty decent guy, straight forward and honest. We’ve been known to poke fun at each other from time to time… but he is the CFO, and he also is my highest ‘maintenance’ customer. I answer to him when bad stuff happens.

My immediate reaction is ‘Oh, no… what the h— did you do?’… but I reply… ‘What happened’, trying to look not too concerned, while my stomach was doing somersault’s. Well, it turned out that he spilled some water in his fairly new (4 months old) laptop. He then explained that he turned it over right away, but not much came out… it was still running and he wanted to know if I was mad about it or if he damaged it. Turns out it was no big deal, and everything is fine… but he sure made my heart skip a beat.

Pretty sure that his thinking I would “kill” him is what did it…

19 Spice ups
2

Someone phoned me up and said that there was smoke coming out of the back of the monitor…

2 Spice ups
3

It always scares the hell out of me when users say they are “computer savy”. Usually that means i’ll see at least 10 tickets from them a month. Over issues they’ve caused themselves.

3 Spice ups
4

“I can’t open any of my documents.”

Which normally ends with me dropping the phone and running out to their location to get their Crypto’d computer off the network.

3 Spice ups
5

"Why is my computer beeping? when it’s not the computer but the UPS.

1 Spice up
6

“I clicked on a link and now I can’t open anything”

1 Spice up
7

“There is a loud high pitched tone coming from the server room.”

“Noone in the office can access the network drives”

“My computer says No boot device is available. Press enter to continue, and I hear a clicking sound coming from the computer.”

About 15 years ago, Two days after a new building access control system with magnet locks was installed. I get a call at 7:30AM. “Noone can get into the building. Noones cards work” At the time, we had also only a few days earlier started testing VPN and I hadn’t been trained on the new access control system yet. Thankfully, the VPN worked, and I was able to remotely restart the controller appliance that had a German CLI.

Also, any time my boss (CEO) calls and says “Would you come down to my office please?” He NEVER gives me any indication of why he is calling me down. Could be anything from “we’re laying so and so off” to “How do I do such and such on my phone?” to “your proposal is approved/denied”

1 Spice up
8

You mean we are not supposed to click ALL the links in emails…

2 Spice ups
9

There is smoke and sparks coming from my power outlet in my cube and the whole row seems to be dead.

1 Spice up
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Or it’s the UPS truck backing up just outside the open window in the office…

1 Spice up
11

Mine has to be “A friend of mine told me…” insert scenario of your choosing!

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I always know when something bads happened when I get a call from a certain user, lets call him Mr M, Mr M used to work in IT so he always rinhs helpdesk when major issues occur as he can explain them more efficiently.

The one that ties knots in my stomach is either “The Internets down” or worse “The phone systems dead”.

13

I fixed it for you…

I love these…

“I clicked it, I know I shouldn’t have”

“You mean I shouldn’t have put my credit card number there?”

“I can’t heat up my lunch if you don’t fix the microwave”

“You know that laptop you gave me yesterday? It’s all wet…”

“I got a popup, something about encrypted files”

Just a few of many…

1 Spice up
14

“You know that issue that was happening last week?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s happening again.”

“FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-”

2 Spice ups