BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "Just need a little hand in the meeting room," our Director says, popping his head around the door to Mission Control. "There's something wrong with the screen." "Really?" the PFY lies. "I was just using it half an hour ago." He wasn't, but there's never anything wrong with the screen …
Likewise, it's almost as if you were a fly on the wall in our workplace…
The only missing part is when a user with a fancy MacBook [1] comes in, and, with zero forewarning of their intention to use the videoconferencing room (because, of course, the support team never have dozens of other pressures on their time), demands assistance to somehow connect it up to the system, which explicitly isn't set up for this (as noted on that beautifully laminated sign on the wall) [2].
And all they actually want to do is show their PDF presentation, which would, unsurprisingly, work just as well from the Windoze PC integrated into the setup. Just put your PDF on a network drive or a USB stick, hold your nose, and grin and bear it. It really won't sully yourself so much to have to use the dark side occasionally, contemptible as it may be. Just wash your hands afterwards.
[1] There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a fancy Mac user, I am one. It's when the sense of entitlement that seems to accompany some Mac users gets out of proportion that the problems start…
[2] And do they ever have whichever uncommon video port converter dongle their MacBook needs with them? Of course not (mercifully becoming a less common occurrence as USB-C -> HDMI is gradually settling into becoming this decade's "everything has a VGA port").
I have lost count of the number of Apple users who come into meetings to do a presentation and have no charge, not connectors, absolutely sod all and expect it to connect to a projector or screen.
If people want to use these things and they have absolutely no useful ports on them for operating in the real work, go an buy the bloody adapters and bring then with you.
Yet the appear surprised when the VGA lead, HDMI lead or standard USB Bharco thingy will not connect or work and state "oh, I had this at the last customer".
Personally I would just throw them out the door and tell them to come back when they have the appropriate equipment. There is a PC connected, you just had to put your huge PowerPoint presentation on a USB key and run it. They don't have a USB, cannot use anyone else's because their policy says it is not permitted to be plugged into their device, cannot email it because it is "Confidential", and so on.
It really winds me up. Fortunately I don't have to deal with that any more.
Take ... personal items ... as deposit. Works every time.
I personally accept beer as a deposit. Wallets, keys, shoes and passports are acceptable. (If beer is left, 10 to 50%% is kept as a service fee, but with ongoing priority support offered).
No one, i mean no one, gets dongles, connectors or cables for free.
> ... beer as a deposit. Wallets, keys, shoes and passports ... No one, i mean no one, gets dongles, connectors or cables for free.
Back when hitch-hiking did not always result in a bad end, there was a sticker: (still available)
"Gas grass or ass-- nobody rides for free!"
> I personally accept beer as a deposit.
Do you return the beer in the same condition it was deposited with you, or does it undergo biological processing before being returned to the user?
Of course if it's fosters then it doesn't matter, they won't taste the difference.
If you have the correct dongle, Macs generally aren't a problem, unless you are trying to connect to multiple displays over a single cable with something like a Thunderbolt dock.
Which is to say that most third-party docks only seem to work reliably with Macs, and docks from the likes of HP/Dell/Lenovo generally don't work reliably with Macs.
The only giveaway that it's fiction is that it's a couple of weeks too late now for that "you've booked it for this time last year". First half of the month, yep, all too familiar.
As is scheduling a meeting with people you see all the time. Or like my boss, ringing up to arrange a time for a phone call.
I wonder if I can hook up a remote control release...
We run a very 'clean' solution; big screen, Cisco videoconferencing unit and a ClickShare.
Most of our users get it right after only a few tries, and reading the directions that have been printed and laminated...
Then there's the inevitable tickets 'Sound is bad', 'other side can't hear me' and even worse, with the video issues...
Because the user is trying to run the conference on his laptop, using the built-in speaker and mic...
And we NEVER get called in to fix it while they're in the room, only afterwards, so we can't show them what they did wrong...
Yeah, they claim to follow the instructions...
AAAAARGH!
Anonymous because I'll probably kill or maim someone soon...
The first rule of any kind of support is that they never ever follow instructions... They may read through the instructions that tell them explicitly to do things in order A,B,C and the more critical it is to do things in the correct order for it to work, the less likely they are to actually do it in said order...
At my place of attendance they took down all the instructions, refused to fix any broken cables etc and just allowed the users to sort themselves out - ie they implicitly discouraged hybrid meetings. You either gather everyone in a room, or you put everyone on Teams and allow them all to work from home on their own laptop and headset. It works like a dream.
I hate hybrid meetings. They almost always mean "one of these sets of people are audience and probably shouldn't have wasted their time coming"
And you can't really tell whether it's the remote or local attendees who shouldn't have bothered.
Werrrll... I have a few counterexamples from last year. The meeting was planned as in-person, and one of the other guys and I had tested positive on The Current New Plague. It was a bit hit and miss, sound wise, but a productive meeting. Would have been much better in person, but sort of worked out.
Oh hell yes.
It is amazing how people have rapidly reverted to assuming that if they have ten people in a meeting room, running the remote access from the built-in microphone of a laptop stuck somewhere on the table is perfectly adequate. With the result that the remote attendees can hear the following:
Indistinct mumbling from the presenter
Occasional loud typing and finger tapping
The side conversation between the two people closest the laptop
why our video team pinned up complicated setup instructions nobody could follow, with their support phone line in BIG NUMBERS at the bottom, and insisted we book all conference calls a day in advance. We soon learned not to bother, and just call the line with a reminder a few minutes before it started. Must have saved them a fortune in old projectors. Gave them an excuse to sit not-playing-games-honest while waiting for the call too, no doubt.
I went all the way to Australia (from the UK), into a management meeting 10 hours or so after I'd landed there, to be greeted with, "G'day* - you don't have a spare charger do you?"
They were fortunate that I did have a Dell universal travel charger with the right tip for their laptop as mine would have been too small.
*OK, they didn't really say G'day!
We used to give people (mainly trustees, directors, big boss types etc) from foreign parts a loan of necessary adaptors to use in the office. No-one every returns them but don't have them with them next meetings. In the end we now say we used to have a lot of adaptors but can't do anything as we're waiting for them to be returned. Cue embarrassment, sometimes, but to fair they were decent people just typical in this area.
We give every user with a laptop a dock with charger to put on the desk(actually, we install it for them, to avoid all the follow-up calls), and the charger that came with the laptop is marked with the same asset code that's on the laptop.
Not only does it cut down on charger being borrowed and lent during meetings, then never returned, but we once had someone from a hotel call us and ask if we knew who owned a certain charger that had been left behind after a meeting.
Then there was the HP EliteBook 8x0 G3 series... May the Rot in Pieces...
They introduced a new, thin plug on that series, but kept the big plug on the dock.
And the PSU for the dock isn't any larger than the laptop charger... So many people brought the wrong one with them because they had the laptop charger at home, and now suddenly had an all-day meeting.
Thank F! that those are now OUT of use here. I will NOT miss them and the different power plug... or the dozen screws holding the bottom plate.(Yes, I counted... )
I'm thinking of painting a set of chargers PINK and have those as loaners...
Every time she needs to set up the interactive whiteboard* when I'm doing exam preparation with kids in a classroom that has no old type whiteboard she faffs around for 10 minutes to get it working.
A couple of weeks back it lost connection for some reason. So I looked at the laminated sheet on the desk next to the teacher PC. Followed the instructions- took 30 seconds to get it connected again. Unusually these instructions are clear, simple and precise
*We occasional staff aren't given a log-in. Which is far enough to be honest- that's the only room we need it.
that the BoFH has done a week coping with the folks I work with (see on call comments for more)
But while grinning my way through his tale I never lost it until "I make an mental note to change our meeting rooms so they have external windows." thats when the keyboard died.
But on the plus side, I'm ahead of el-reg's very own BoFH because our meeting room does have external windows(with a very dodgy catch)... sadly the plunge from 2 floors up is rarely fatal. Unless the PFY parks the woodchipper right below and leaves it running...
He should have called the appropriate people, on teams, during a lunch hour for a meeting that's almost... But not entirely irrelevant so you can comment that maybe.... Just maybe someone of the call should look at the data being passed through to our end as that's got the problem before continuing to blame our provable working system that only breaks on some new bits put directly into prod because "it was working on test so we just added it to prod" without any rollout management.
And somehow it's still all our fault, along with not being allowed to bill my wasted time to their team.
* proceeds to scream at the wall since it's more receptive to others *
My boss and I both have lunchtimes blocked off as such in our calendars. (The boss for medical reasons.)
Our company salesmen (not the ladies) regularly arrange important customer meetings during this time. I has been raised with upper manglement, who just remind us that the customer is always right and the sales people bring in our wages.
I missed a meeting one lunchtime (arranged at 10 minutes notice) as I had already left for a Doctors appointment. Returned at the end of the lunch hour I found the meeting request and a email from the bosses, bosses, boss demanding I call him immediately. We had a very frank discussion, and rather than me resign and claim constructive dismissal, I can now defer my lunch if there is a lunchtime call and I can go to personal appointments in work time.
Salesmen arranging calls in lunch hour has unfortunately not changed.
I'm UK-based but work for a European company, so there is the annoyance of my colleagues (and customers) booking meetings "after lunch", meaning during lunch for me.
I've gone the same route of routinely blocking out my lunch hour in my calendar as a meeting (a private one, but it still shows as busy) but get the same irritation all too frequently.
And for certain repeat offenders, I don't deny I occasionally book "late morning" meetings with them to do the same in reverse as there seems to be no other way to get the hint across.
We need to update the meeting room AV equipment.
OK. We can put in a laser light source projector - lower running costs, brighter image etc
No, no. I want a TV screen.
OK. Erm... you do know that we would have to get a 100", or more precisely 98".
No. That's too expensive. Let's go for 65.
You know that's below the accessibility guide lines? Especially for old codgers like me who can't see so well any more?
So?
OK, well it will just about be acceptable if we don't use the rear third of the room.
Oh, and I want you to get rid of the second screen.
You mean the one the presenter appears on if they're coming in remotely via Zoom?
Yes. We can put them picture in picture.
You mean OVER the top of about 15% of their slide content?
Well, what's that one where they go into a black bar on the side?
Side-by-side mode.
Yes. We'll use that.
Losing another 30% of the screen size and making the presentation appear as if it's on a 49" screen?
I see the problem. OK, we'll get a 98" screen then.
OK. I'll just call the fire officer and get them to do an assessment.
Why?
It's a partition wall made of double skim plaster board that lines up with the fire containment doors in the corridor outside. I just want to make sure that when we hang a 70kg TV off it, that it's not going to compromise the integrity of the building's fire containment.
Eight weeks later we get the fire officer's report. No can do. The weight of a screen would pull the wall into a fire and breach the 30 minute rating, exposing the refuge area wall to higher than design temperatures sooner than expected. Maximum load on wall 20kg, protruding no more than 150mm.
Sure you don't just want a projector?
No... I want a TV. They have a TV in the other department. It looks great and it's much easier to use that our conference system.
You want to change the conferencing system as well?
Yes. It's too complex.
The one where you just key in the meeting number and tell it if the speaker is located here or on Zoom?
Yes. It never works.
*Under breath* I wonder why?
*Aloud* OK, we can take out a section of wall and rebuild it in breeze. That way we get a pocket to hide the video kit in and we can get a simple PC to run the Zoom. You won't be able to present from your Mac anymore, but that's a small price to pay for "reducing the complexity".
Another eight weeks later and the architects report and costings come back. Twenty one thousand pounds.
The AV installation design and costing comes back at this point too. Another twenty three thousand on top.
So I get called into the office. Can we just get a new projector? This is dragging on a bit.
Me: F7U12
Have two or three of those conversation every week. Oh for handy ceiling mounted projector.
Other bug bear is the amount of PowerPoint presentations I watch where the presenter (sometimes also known as the Communications director) does not know there is a presentation mode (its the one with out the slide thumbnails listed down the left hand side of screen and does not have a toolbar), shows it in notes mode or only has one slide, which is better than 24 slide, each of which has the text of the presentation on it , which the presenter then reads at half the speed I do.......
I can't use presentation mode because our company PowerPoint template (that we *must* use for all company presentations) is somehow corrupted and displays the dot points in reverse order. So everyone sees my full deck at the left, but it doesn't help them because they don't know when I'm going to insert a highly unofficial joke into the presentation.
Another vote for defenestration!
The projector can follow to give him something to look forward to after he reaquaints himself the car park.
Reverse the order if the window wasn't of the opening persuasion.
Zoom here zoom there - the last few years has been like a (more) demented episode of Roger Ramjet (qv.)
"You are too stupid to operate a PC, so here is a pencil, some paper and a desk phone. Now do try not to stab yourself with the pencil or cut yourself on the paper". We all encounter them fairly regularly and we do try VERY HARD not to let it get to us. In fact if it wasn't for the catharsis we get from the BOFH stories, there might well be much more need for carpets, lime, and shovels.
I was once asked to check a projector as it was apparently not working, I switched the attached PC on and amazingly it started working. A few weeks later it wasn't working again, but this time it was because the principal had switched it on by moving the voltage switch from 230 to 120 and thus had turned it off rather permanently.
Ah yes, or peripheral vision loses all color, as the target becomes preternaturally sharp. The beard prickles. The target's eyes open wide. Must not throw him over the cliff. He signs the pay checks - his partner signs them - must not - his partner won't mind at all - mmmmuuusssttt not. Oh look he almost backed over all by himself, and I stopped him. Later, his partner, "what's wrong with you?"
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