A few
Story 1: I work at a small regional bank in the US.
As is often the case in a smaller IT shop like mine things seem to either be completely dead quiet or insanely busy, often with no rhyme or reason as to why since the problems that come in are often not related. A PC goes down in one office and not a few minutes later someone else has a problem in another part of the building. After several hours of people calling in with frantic requests for help - since their problem is obviously the most important thing - it can get to even the most seasoned of sysadmins resulting in a increasingly short temper.
So near the end of a particularly rough day, I get a call from a teller who insists that they can not print out a transaction receipt for a customer to their little serial printer. I run through what I think is a pretty good checklist. Is the cable connected to the device? Is the print session to the AS400 open properly? Does it have power? I check the print device on the AS400 host and its online too. This of course all takes time to do but the employee is having none of that and is becoming increasingly agitated because of course if we don't fix it in 20 seconds then we're incompetent.
"Fine I'll be out in a minute to replace it," thinking I'll just swap the stupid thing and worry about it in the morning.
Arrive out there, and the teller and the teller's boss are fuming about this because they had to hand write the receipt, oh-heaven-forbid. I open the top of the little Epson receipt printer to swap out the paper roll and see the problem. "There's no paper on the roll." I tilt the printer so they can see, shut it, and walk out without saying another word.
Story 2:
"My keyboard won't work anymore" the person in the mail room tells me, "So I can't punch in to the time clock." There's few things that upset a user more than not being able to punch in immediately when they get to work. The idea of staying an extra minute or two at the end of the day to make up for it is often met with the shrieks and cries of the damned. Fortunately he called early in the morning so I'm in a relatively good mood and his pained cries for help are easily brushed aside.
"Okay, probably just broke down, we have plenty of spares. Maybe you could punch in from someone else's desk and I'll be right down." Go to the storage closet and grab a spare, hoping the rest of the day will be this easy.
Get there, spare keyboard in hand and disconnect his old one. As I go to throw it in the trash can next to his desk a stream of water comes out of the keys, resulting in a puddle of water on the carpet. "Um, did you spill something on this keyboard?"
"Well, yeah, I spilled some water this morning. Does that break them?"
"Well, computers run on electricity and these are electronics, so yeah."
"oh.."
Users..
Story 3:
Problem with the AS400 host system of some nature and users are in a panic. They can't process loans, can't open accounts, can't do anything. After the first few calls from users we're all getting a little bit nervous I send out an email to all users saying the AS400 is having a problem and we're working on it. The stress starts to increase when a few more issues crop up on other systems since those systems can't talk to the AS400 now either. So the stress factor starts to multiply.
So we're making calls left and right to various vendors and support personnel for assistance. While trying to do these productive things people in another department start bombarding my email with messages about how the AS400 is down. I email them back tell them we're working on it. But the emails keep coming.
After the problem subsides I go up to tell them personally and directly that everything's working now. They are all laughing and said they know they were just pulling a little joke on me.
So the next morning before they came in I went up there with some tools and pulled all but one wheel off their rolling chairs. This resulted in security being involved in trying to figure out what happened and multiple emails going around asking for information. I let those emails circulate for a while and then told security what occurred and where to find the wheels. I left them behind the desks trash can of each user. I wasn't written up and that group didn't call the help desk for about two weeks after that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
