Why is "cat urine" in my IT Ticket?

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GoWest1223@reddit

Second ticket I had with a new company was to spray fox urine around the backup generator behind our office. That was my first urine related helpdesk ticket.

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cheeley@reddit

No, they are now the SME for any and all future urine-related issues.

I don’t make the rules.

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soulreaper11207@reddit

Thought my department only had SME's lol

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kloudykat@reddit

hell even Captain Hook had a SME

https://super-villain.fandom.com/wiki/Mr.Smee(Hook)

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samtresler@reddit

Upside? Free doctorate.

He's a urologist now.

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No-Reflection-869@reddit

Wait until he finds out about the water heaters in hotels.

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optimuspryma@reddit

I wish this wasn’t true, but it is lmao

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Big-Industry4237@reddit

Fox urine? Not coyote urine? That’s what I have used lol 😂

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sneakattaxk@reddit

How do you get said woodland creatures to piss on your generator? I’m out here taking a break from the keg and wizzing all over mine. About to go back in for another round of

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

Can't say I've had a urine ticket, but the # of rodent related server room / networking stuff is too darn high.

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joeygladst0ne@reddit

Yup. I've had rats chew cables, even seen dead rats in a rack

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GoWest1223@reddit

For those wondering, it was to keep rodents from damaging the wiring.

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DeifniteProfessional@reddit

I learnt this from watching Brassic. Who says you can't gain knowledge from binge watching 5 series in two weeks?

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way__north@reddit

A case of PPPPPP?
(proper planning prevents piss poor performance)

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That_Dirty_Quagmire@reddit

“First”?

You mean there were more to follow?

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HourOf11@reddit

Hopefully it was a nice day out. Good time to smoke a bone

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DOUBLEBARRELASSFUCK@reddit

Good time to smoke a bone

Sounds like a one person job, doubt there was any bone to smoke at the time.

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jake04-20@reddit

I found this comment particularly entertaining lol

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Years ago back in the Blackberry days a director came to me with his that he’d “gotten wet”. Luckily I had a new one in stock and offered to take his device to do the swap. It was still a little damp and he went on his way while I worked. Almost immediately I could smell the smell - it reeked of cat pee. I had to put it in a ziploc bag to work on it and scrubbed my hands and arms. I have grown up with cats and always had them in my life so I know they do gross things but don’t hide that from people that have to touch the equipment.

Almost as bad as my colleague that had an end user try to hand him the still wet phone he’d just dropped in the urinal.

People are horrible.

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SkullRunner@reddit

It's a bio-hazard write off, would not even need to see it.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

100%. I'm losing no sleep over tossing a Chromebook of all things.

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tmontney@reddit

Assuming it was working fine and you could re-issue it, it'll forever smell of cat piss. Imagine handing that out to users, the reputation damage to you and your department.

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

unless you give it to someone who owns cats, they either won't notice or will have the proper enzymatic solvent for cat urine

source: have three cats

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kamomil@reddit

No thanks... what if the cats pee on the computer bag?

Cat pee smell is weird, you can think that you got all the spots with cleaner, and a week later you start smelling it again.

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PenlessScribe@reddit

We had a cat who was diabetic for his last few months and sometimes peed just outside the litter box. A UV flashlight was helpful to find any spots we missed cleaning.

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Sovey_@reddit

You know what this house needs? A box of shit. Let's get a cat.

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RainStormLou@reddit

Dude..... what??? I have three cats and if anybody brought me something smelling like cat piss, I would lose my mind lol. I've had to talk to staff at least twice in recent memory about dropping bags of devices with vomit or urine on them in my tech's offices while they are out on assignment, and you better believe that I start that conversation by dropping that bag on their desk.

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Taboc741@reddit

I'm not certain that using the required solvents will leave a functional computer.

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

it says organic solvent so robot stuff should be fine

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pfak@reddit

Ugh I have a cat and no thank you

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SkullRunner@reddit

Goes on the special "cat people only" shelf in a zip lock bag to really seal in the flavor until needed.

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Unable-Entrance3110@reddit

[...] it'll forever smell of cat piss.

You can clean cat piss off unless it was literally dunked in it.

Not like the computers that come back from a smoker's house... Those are forever going to smell like an ash tray.

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santaclaws_@reddit

Save it for those especially deserving upper management types like the comptroller who wanted it returned to save money.

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SH4ZB0T@reddit

If the bio-hazard argument does not stick for whatever reason, I would write it off based on the fact that cat urine is typically corrosive. I would treat it as a total loss like smoke particles getting sucked into a device.

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DJOMaul@reddit

What kind of smoke is a problem? Asking for a friend.

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MattAdmin444@reddit

Cigarettes for sure because the tar starts to coat stuff. No clue if other things that are smoked create as much tar build up.

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HerrHauptmann@reddit

"Welcome to flavor country".

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Contren@reddit

Opening up a PC of someone who is a heavy indoor smoker is an experience that I hopefully am done experiencing in my life.

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thil3000@reddit

Any type of soot is able to conduct electricity so short circuit waiting to happen somewhere

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HerrHauptmann@reddit

Smoke from nearby fires hurts computers too. I once had to recover a few PCs from a building that was near to one that catched fire. Computers smelled to burnt plastic and they were unusable after 30 minutes

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cjbarone@reddit

All.

When I went to college, we had a graphic comparing the thickness of smoke (I assume tobacco?) and a human hair, vs the distance between the read head and the platter in a hard drive.

Learned very quick, smoke damage means the hard drive could be damaged, and not to trust it.

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cosmos7@reddit

You did the right thing

Other than proper data sanitization and disk destruction you mean.

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SkullRunner@reddit

They said they put it in the bin, in most IT offices that means "for shredding" via Iron Mountain etc. which is where the drives they pulled would end up too.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

Correct. Our recycler charges a bit extra per drive, as opposed to if we remove it, but that is a (very minimal) cost I am willing to argue is necessary

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sambodia85@reddit

So many people in my team can’t get their head around the idea of economic write-off.

Spending a day fixing a 5 year old laptop, chasing terminated users who forgot to return chargers. Cat urine would have to be the top of the list of things not worth anyone’s time to solve, you’re a good director, can I join your team please!

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minimaximal-gaming@reddit

I'm with you in generell but 3 chargers in 2 weeks at a 75ish company is a bit too much. We are a MSP so it's cheaper in any way to just buy new ones than that someone will work on a ticket like this. Bit I don't get it "you never got a charger" What did you use the last three years at travel (international sales)? Or where you get some old broken IPhone cables as laptop charger back. Really? mlst of our clients Issue Samsung s Series as company phones. But sometimes there is really nice shit in this return boxes from the sales guys. Two Brand new laser distance meter, not the cheap one the branded ones.

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sambodia85@reddit

Yeah, we have all our staff a Docking monitor during COVID, and they have a dock or monitor at work. So I believe many of them simply never took the charger out of the box and inadvertently threw it out.

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ddadopt@reddit

Had a user angrily complain about the failure of the laptop. User had plugged the laptop into docking station (a real docking station, not a USB-C thing) and it didn't work. We saw evidence of arcing on the bottom of the laptop and tore it down on the bench. The inside of the laptop was sticky and we observed some weird yellowish residue. We picked up the smell shortly thereafter. Then we openedhe clamshell and noticed cat hair all over the keyboard and everything became clear.

User's cat had pissed on his laptop and the laptop shorted when he put it on the dock. It was fucking disgusting. That was the day we started keeping latex gloves in stock in the IT office.

We informed user of what the problem was. User then angrily demanded a replacement machine ASAP. We obviously did not want to issue one, but his management chain insisted. FML.

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

We obviously did not want to issue one, but his management chain insisted. FML.

Why wouldn't you just replace it ..? As weird as we get for the replacement requests if laptop or phone is fked... It gets replaced. People gotta do business.

I'm not about to say no to a business tool and have staff with no computer just cause they did something stupid.

Had one dropped off on deck "not booting anymore". Was CLEARLY U shaped lol. Been run over.

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ddadopt@reddit

User only worked out of office ten percent of the time or so. We wanted to issue him a desktop rather than give him another laptop for his cat to piss on.

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

I guess that's sort of ok... but still.

I don't agree with many posters on here that IT should be the gatekeeper of what type of equipment users should get. Too many times I see people repeating this same thing "oh IT decided this users shouldn't have a laptop" - why...? Surely the business unit should be in charge of saying "we need laptops and we'll pay for them".

Is one single cat piss laptop enough to for IT to decide how this user will do their job in the future?

I had a guy lose 2 x phones to being crushed by a forklift in like 6 months. He still gets a new work phone.

We provide a service. We do not decide how to run their business. Which is a controversial opinion here I know!

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

I generally agree with you. Part of the job is providing users with the technology tools needed to do their jobs.

That says, there needs to be a balance. We have users who literally only check email and use the office suite wanting MacBook Pros. From a budget perspective, there is no way in my right mind that I can condone spending an extra $1500 per machine when there is no necessary use case. There are the tools necessary, the ideal tools that make the work go now smoothly, and then there is wasteful wanting for reasons unrelated to the work.

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ddadopt@reddit

Upvote for the very good points. FWIW, though, we didn't want to be gatekeepers, we just didn't want to have to deal with cat piss.

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narcissisadmin@reddit

It's just fucked that the user knew what the problem was, tried to cover it up, wasted everyone's time pretending they had no clue, and let them mess with something that was soaked in cat piss.

So fuck that user.

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

So fuck that user.

Oh absolutely fuck them. lol.

I am not giving them a pass on the cat piss part.

BUt "you have offended IT. We are withdrawing services from you!" is a bit much!

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rcp9ty@reddit

Might I suggest instead of Latex you go with powder free nitrile gloves. There's two reasons for this. 1st some people have latex allergies. 2nd, you can use these gloves for spreading thermal paste directly on cpu/gpu when replacing heatsinks or repasting chips. Rather than trying to spread it using a credit card or other device.

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ddadopt@reddit

They actually were nitrile. Sorry, I'm old--I was proud of myself for calling them "latex" and not "rubber" gloves.

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rcp9ty@reddit

Rubber gloves would be fine in this context :P
Latex gloves are made of natural rubber
Nitrile gloves are made of synthetic rubber

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ddadopt@reddit

Well, shit.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

We also keep latex gloves in the office, thankfully, but this was somehow missing from my list of reasons for getting them.

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jadedarchitect@reddit

Reminds me of the time I asked the 20-something at autozone if he had anything that would get the smell of tiger urine out of my challenger lmao

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michaelpaoli@reddit

Meh. Woman I knew ... she had 5 cats. PeeC ... yeah, one of her cats pissed right into one of her laptops ... to make matters worse, the laptop was closed and upside down ... that was the death of that - henceforward known as PeeC. She tried cleaning it - it still reeked of urine. Someone else braver than I troubleshot the mainboard - soaked through - internal shorts where ought not be - basically dead mainboard.

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TheGreatNico@reddit

When I worked at a hospital, every once in a while, we would get a system from the ER or OR that was bagged and tagged with a biohazard sticker, they'd ask us to get data off of it and that was one of the few times we could tell a doctor to go pound sand. Best case: piss. Worse case: we had a sanitary sewer backup that flooded a few offices in the basement, and there's no way on God's Green Earth I'm opening that bag.

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743389@reddit

Man, this stuff makes me wonder if there's a niche demand for people to deal with this kind of thing. 'Cause I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I get that it's out of scope for what you got hired to do, but if there's enough people willing to pay me to put on gloves and a respirator to run photorec or whatever, I'm down.

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TheGreatNico@reddit

Not sure how much of a shot you're going to have recovering data off a spinning drive that was sitting in a lake of... every form of human waste imaginable plus some HP Lovecraft shit... overnight, but if you're welcome to get ebolapoxfluenza for a few bucks if you wish.

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743389@reddit

Oh, it's worse than it sounded. Well, maybe the control board is just fucked...

I think I'd want to make sure I have an escalation path in place if I do this though, lol.

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smoike@reddit

This is why backups were invented and OneDrive has been pushed so hard by Microsoft.

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TheGreatNico@reddit

That was our argument. We just had a hard push for backing everything up prior to a major hardware refresh/domain migration, we probably sent 2 emails a day for a month, posters, mandatory department meetings, literally everything. 'Your shit's gettin replaced whether you like it or not' and let me tell you, they did not.

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Helpjuice@reddit

Anything with urin, fecal matter, or other human waste or internal things made external, cigerate waste, etc. should be treated as a biohazard and promptly bagged, tagged, removed from inventory and destroyed/recycled.

Great job on getting rid of it, but there needs to be a better policy put in place that rejects things like this. No IT person should be dealing with these things as it is hazardous to their health and wellbeing.

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Slim_Charles@reddit

My employer requires that we wipe and confirm erasure of all drives prior to sending them to our recycler. If this happened at my workplace, we'd definitely have to crack the thing open and extract the drive. That would definitely piss me off.

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smoike@reddit

Figuring out where the drive is and putting a 10lb sledgehammer to it a couple of times insufficient for him? Hell I would consider refusing to touch it and sending it to the on-site incinerator if it's a hospital.

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Slim_Charles@reddit

I work in government, so we have a very strictly defined procedure on how we're supposed to wipe drives. Deviating, even in exceptional cases, would cause headaches. I know the auditors would give us shit about it. I love my job, but we are often not governed by reason.

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smoike@reddit

I figured you were likely in one.

I was just wondering if there were "exception" rules for "unique" situations just like this. I'm in a government department too and all too familiar with the high likelihood that an event like this hadn't been considered as a possibility in the process flow (there are always going to be things overlooked). It got me wondering if you might have been able to arrange a once off work around with your manager so you didn't have to handle the biohazard hardware.

Even if it didn't, I hope that now an exceptional situation has happened, it gave reason for a review of the flow and maybe an improvement in the process flow to accommodate situations like this.

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Slim_Charles@reddit

I am the manager in my department, so it would be up to me to determine if we would break with policy and the exceptional procedure to follow in this case. To be honest, if I was just dealing with cat pee, I'd just have my staff give me the machine and I'd wipe it myself. Not worth the headache of deviating from policy, finding a suitable vendor to shred it, paying for that to be done, and then justifying all of that to our auditors. It would have to be a serious biohazard risk to justify all of that, when I could just throw on gloves, put on a mask and do it myself.

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Helpjuice@reddit

For biohazards you can just have the drive shredded vs recycled. Recycling is fine for non-biohazards, shredding for things humans should not be touching goes beyound recycling and makes the problem disappear. The shredding facility will certify it's destruction and if allowed you can watch and record it being destroyed.

Asking a human to look into it is a health hazard and can lead to legal liability not acceptable to the majority of companies unless it is for evidence collection, or infectious diesease analysis which is hanlded in a biolab and properly handeled.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

Very fair and true. It's bagged, tagged, and separated at this point, pending destruction.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

Agreed.

Fortunately, this is the first time something like this has come up in my time here, but I definitely have it on the docket to discuss in next week's team meeting. No repeats of this on my watch.

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dasWibbenator@reddit

This is specific info that people can use to get out of touching cat pee devices.

Cat urine or any feline excrement can carry toxoplasmosis which can after pregnant people and immunocompromised folks.
Because you mention Chromebook it’s making me feel like this involves a school. Please be aware that households that are “math labs” will smell the same. Please be careful touching these items with bare skin.

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Afro_Samurai@reddit

Am I missing something or do you mean to refer to a meth lab?

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dasWibbenator@reddit

The chemicals used to produce that product cause other things to smell like cat urine. Yes, I’m referring to the product and not math. Although technically math would be involved.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

I just figured that "math" has that effect on some people.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

Adult learners, but heard and understood.

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rtangwai@reddit

When I was a bench tech for HP we got a DeskJet printer come in from a science lab for repairs.

I opened it up and found that a monkey did its business on it - the printer had been deployed to an outdoor science station in Africa.

The director of the lab called me demanding why it wasn't covered under warranty.

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boyinawell@reddit

Had someone do a desk move, team member was pretty new. Got a message from my team member if they had to touch the person's shoes.

The person expected my team member to move everything. Everything in every drawer, their collection of personal items stashed under their desk including some sweaty shoes. Even taking down pinned up pictures.

Love it.

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discosoc@reddit

Reminds me of way back in the day when I worked at CompUSA. Someone brought in a Mac with piss sloshing around inside and asked if we could repair it.

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racerj3@reddit

We had the same thing at an old org I worked at. User submitted a ticket only stating the device would not turn on.

As soon as we opened the box the laptop was in, instant cat pass smell. we asked the user about it and they acted like they hadn't noticed, which was absolutely ridiculous.

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DrAculaAlucardMD@reddit

So.... I have cats. Cats in general do have a smell as their feet are in a litter box, and they walk everywhere. So the scent goes everywhere. Counter tops, your bed, everywhere you don't want it, it will be. While I use a cat genie so my house does not smell anymore (nothing attached to their paws) it's amazing how quickly folks become nose blind to their own situation. Like the CG is so good that people who have never been over had no idea I had a cat until they pop out of whatever hidey hole they just were sleeping in. I bet their home is probably rather rank and they just don't notice anymore. It's like smokers, or folks that work with refuse.

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racerj3@reddit

No, this was actual cat peed on the laptop. Besides the smell there were stains and then damage on system board that also smelled of cat urine.

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DrAculaAlucardMD@reddit

I just meant that maybe they couldn't notice the smell because their house was very unclean. The stains would have been a giveaway I would hope. Still... not cool.

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fausto_@reddit

Had a user recently throw up on their machine. Got drunk and tried to do a data transfer hours before having to fly out. He cleaned it as well as he could. When I asked what he spilled, he clammed up. I firmly told him “I need to know for my safety” He then walked over and said “I may have gotten sick”. WTF!!!! Lol

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upperVoteme@reddit

i don't mess with bodily fluids

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blue_canyon21@reddit

Had a similar case a few years ago. I worked for a meat processing operation that owned several farms.

One day, a laptop comes in that just emanated the fine aroma of steer manure and dirt. Apparently, the farm manager took it with him to do his rounds and left it on a fence post. It got knocked off and fell into a nice ripe pile of bovine excrement. He brough it in, apologized profusely, and even offered to pay for the replacement. Since he was so cool about it, we just pardoned his mistake and loaded his backup on a new laptop.

As for the poo laptop, we took it outside, dismantled it, and cleaned/sanitized every inch of it inside and out. Even after sanitization, the smell was still there. From then on, if a user brought their laptop in for repair because of a stupid reason, they got the poo laptop as a loaner. If a user forgot their laptop at home, they got the poo laptop for the day.

Eventually, people became much more careful with their equipment.

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DrAculaAlucardMD@reddit

You really bungled this opportunity to call it a Crap-top instead of the poo laptop. For shame....

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blue_canyon21@reddit

I am ashamed...

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smoike@reddit

I'm sorry, I found the "poo laptop" hilarious.

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VosekVerlok@reddit

Back in the day we had a user report their company blackberry got 'wet', we ordered them a new one.
HOWEVER.. they didn't tell us not only was it just wet, it apparently fell into the toilet during a #2
They dropped it off in IT in the box, in a bag, grabbed their new device and basically ran away...
We just left the box on the blackberry guys desk, it took about 15-20 mins before the small started wafting out....

Much better than the shitbetty, was the bbq sauce laptop....
'User reports laptop smells like BBQ sauce after device is running for 10-15 mins, has no idea what could of happened'

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DrAculaAlucardMD@reddit

If someone removes a replacement device without authorization they get disabled until it's returned. That's every account, and their number as well. The problem will resolve itself in short order.

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0RGASMIK@reddit

Nope cat urine is an instant bag and toss. If they need us to destroy the data then its getting taken to the gun range so I can shoot it from a safe distance. When I was a kid my cat pee'd on my carpet, the smell never went away. For years anything that touched that spot picked up the smell of cat pee forever. I had to be careful not to leave anything on the floor there and even went as far as to stain the carpet with bleach to mark it out for me(this didn't get rid of the smell.) Shoes, my schoolbag, dirty clothes, towels, anything that touched that spot forever smelled like cat piss.

Almost 5 years later we ripped up the carpet and replaced it with wood. To this day if you go into that room on a hot day you still smell the light scent of cat piss upon opening the door. At least now you can put something down on the floor without it picking up the scent.

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Not_your_guy_buddy42@reddit

my man never learned about enzymes

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winter_forest_cabin@reddit

I was just wondering why you didn't just pick up the carpet and throw away until I realized you meant a a whole ass carpet floor. Those things are the worst inventions ever.

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wideace99@reddit

No repercussion = no responsibility !

Why should any user care about the company hardware ?

Next time, expect human shit in the form of a cake on the returned laptop.

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absolut_punk@reddit

I remember Dell laptops having an issue years ago where something during the production process made them smell like cat pee. I had to have a few E6430u laptops replaced because of user complaints.

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DrAculaAlucardMD@reddit

"Biohazard, dispose and charge accordingly."

From my helpdesk days at apple I have seen everything. As such if there are bugs, a bio-based sheen, horrific odors, or bodily fluids it gets trashed asap. I won't get sick over this and no one should have to.

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cybersplice@reddit

We had a super generic ticket for a laptop that stopped working. Super busy guy, don't have time for this etc. TL;DR the guy went into a meeting and left the laptop on top of one of his restaurant's panini presses.

It was banana shaped.

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mimes_piss_me_off@reddit

piss-poor director

Well, you are now. You had an opportunity to be a piss-rich director, but you threw it out!

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SnooHedgehogs3735@reddit

Actually there are chemicals, plastifiers and storage comunds which in combination with isopropyl sanitizer create smell which is similar to urine (very close compound) or to smell of something dead and rotting (mercaptane). I experienced dozens of Dell Edge servers, notebooks and Optiflex workstations which had that smell after they spent some time in closed room after unpacking

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TheProle@reddit

In my helpdesk days our CEO’s EA came in frantically needing help with the CEO’s water damaged blackberry. He had to leave for the airport in 3 hours and we didn’t have any spare devices. I took it apart, cleaned and dried it, put it back together and handed it off with a new battery. That’s when she told me it fell in the shitter…..

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Mariale_Pulseway@reddit

the way there was no shame in bringing it back smelling like pee is mind blowing to me

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Jsullykc816@reddit

Bought 500 laptops from dell once and about a dozen or so users said their laptop smelled like cat piss. Turns out it was some kind of glue that was used that smells like cat piss in production. They replaced the laptops.

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Moontoya@reddit

A lot of my tickets are users taking the piss

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7ep3s@reddit

worst one I ever had was fish soup in a laptop.

frequently saw desktops from production floor where all the internals were caked in sawdust.

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wmdein@reddit

One of our clients had a NUC server (just for a simple application - business critical though), and this NUC was placed very well.. they sometimes took their dog to their office, and you can guess what happened, nobody could work anymore and we had to install a new NUC server. Surprisingly after some time we got it working again, and reeking of course lol

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Hibbiee@reddit

- Ticket: Can I get a new laptop? Mine won't start and I don't know why.
- Reply: It smells like coffee and when you tilt it coffee comes dripping out...
- Ticket: That's weird..

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RBeck@reddit

Once when Blackberries were a thing someone sent me a phone and said they dropped it in the lake and it doesn't work anymore. Handled it a bunch, put it in rice etc.

Talking to someone else months later and they're like "Oh yah what-his-face dropped his phone in the toilet".

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jnievele@reddit

We once had a user who spilled milk over his keyboard... And then put it on the radiator to dry it. Apparently the smell was... Not pleasant at all...

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euyis@reddit

I once spilled milk over my laptop keyboard... and then just poured water on the keyboard until it was mostly out. Bless the old water resistant keyboard Thinkpads and the drain holes.

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F7xWr@reddit

Why do people have to have food and drinks by this stuff? It takes like 3 minutes to eat something. Then come back and work. Cant believe the anount of food in these keyboards!

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zakabog@reddit

It takes like 3 minutes to eat something.

I typically take 30 minutes to an hour to eat lunch. I don't have the luxury of stepping away from my desk to go to the main cafeteria, nor would there be enough space if everyone did this. That being said, I push my electronics back when it's time to eat and make room for my food.

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narcissisadmin@reddit

I don't have the luxury of stepping away from my desk to go to the main cafeteria, nor would there be enough space if everyone did this.

I would never eat at my desk, that's not a break at all.

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zakabog@reddit

I would never eat at my desk, that's not a break at all.

I don't blame you, a lot of people can't separate the desk from work, for me I'm grabbing food, coffee, or other beverages throughout the day (the company has a nearly endless supply of snacks and drinks), and I can't step away for a while every single time so my desk is just where I get to enjoy food. Plus I'm usually just browsing Reddit or watching YouTube videos during lunch. At my last company I would step away and we would all eat together, but there was only a few of us so it was easy. At the company before that I would go out to get food but then we'd come back and eat at our desks, unless it was a crazy stressful day and I just needed the time to myself, then I'd go sit in one of our storage rooms with a co-worker and just chat and enjoy our food. I've just never been so stressed at this job that I needed to get out of the office or step away from my desk for that long.

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TheBestHawksFan@reddit

My god you don't have eat so fast, dude. Stop it, actually. You're setting bad expectations and snarfing down food like that is bad for you to boot. Slow down, enjoy your lunch.

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DominusDraco@reddit

Look at Mr Fancy Pants over here! This guy gets to leave his desk!

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ZugzwangDK@reddit

To be fair, how else would you go about curdling your keyboard cheese?

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its_nikolaj@reddit

Lemon juice!

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jnievele@reddit

IIRC it was the same office that "watered" their hydroponic plant with coffee leftovers. I was there when they tried to lift it out of the pot... Let's just say hydroponics should only involve water!

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jnievele@reddit

Yeah... And they were beancounters (aka Financen & Accounting)

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ZugzwangDK@reddit

Sounds like they got all the hassle of growing hydroponics, but without the no soil, no pathogens benefits.

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jnievele@reddit

IIRC it was the same office that "watered" their hydroponic plant with coffee leftovers. I was there when they tried to lift it out of the pot... Let's just say hydroponics should only involve water!

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Sad_Analyst_5209@reddit

New computer, my male cat took offense to it. He backed up, took aim, and pissed straight into the 3 in by 5 in ventilation grid. I dried everything up but the next day all it would do is the beep code for memory error. Got another new computer and put it up on my desk. Just for fun I got a can of circuit board cleaner and after pulling the memory sticks sprayed down the circuit board and the memory sticks. Next day put it back together and turned it on. Took about ten minutes to boot to the repair screen. Repair did not work so I went into the BIOS to change the boot sequence, the PCIe drive was listed so I selected that. Booted straight to Windows. Already set up the replacement computer so I am giving the other one to my wife.

Surprisingly there is no smell, the cat is fixed and "spray" must come from a different source. My wife has a sensitive nose and the computer is in her office room and she hasn't said a word. I had used the cleaner with the computer on some newspaper on the dining room table, she complained about that smell..

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macros1980@reddit

Once had a user submit a ticket for IT to deal with the dead pigeon in the car park.

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minimaximal-gaming@reddit

Last week we cleand with two people a customers roof drain pipe. We are a MSP we do everything for our hourly rate...

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Stosstrupphase@reddit

TBH, I would charge a LOT extra for handling dead animals at work.

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TotallyNotIT@reddit

For the dead pigeon, just get a shovel and take turns seeing how far you can fling it. Team building activity.

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minimaximal-gaming@reddit

Yeah if we talk about dead animals or some really disgusting since that are way out of scope for IT we probaly would charge double. But this was just some cloked pipe and we were with two people on site for running some new network cabeling and we had the big ladders for the job anyway. So we do whatever our client helps to there business, this is our business. A lot of people in this industry don't get it we are not here because bew Server Hardware is cool to play with, we are here to give the company the tools (IT) to do there business processes.

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DangerousVP@reddit

Personally I think it would have made you a piss-rich director.

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mercurygreen@reddit

I don't think you were piss POOR... More likely "piss ENHANCED!"

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

If I say that in the office, my team will call me "piss enhanced" for the next month.

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mercurygreen@reddit

Only the month?

Your team is kind!

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

More that they're creative. I'm fairly certain they'd find something else in a month, and then just bring this one up on occasion.

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SergioSF@reddit

Managment should have told the employee their employees will not be touching anything on the computer, asked the user to backup the data themselves, and tossed the device.

Disgusting.

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tmontney@reddit

piss-poor

heh

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

Thank you.

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alficles@reddit

Lol, I was going to say it would make you a poor piss-director. :D

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LONESEEKER@reddit

I work in a K12 public school and deal with a lot of Chromebooks. At times we do have Chromebooks that smell like cat piss. Unfortunately one of the causes is that somebody is cooking meth in the home, and we may get law enforcement involved. It kind of sad that the kids are exposed to this.

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

it's sad if they're exposed to actual cat piss too

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Holmesless@reddit

Your a good one

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

I'm extremely fortunate to have the position I have now; worked my way up from help desk to network admin to director. I'm equally fortunate to have the team that I have now. None of that is lost on me.

I have been there and seen far too many abysmal IT managers, and I straight up refuse to emulate those behaviors.

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DiscardStu@reddit

In the last school I worked for I get a call from the nurse to let me know that a student got sick and vomited all over their Chromebook. They want to know what to do with the Chromebook, so I ask how bad it is. Nurse says its bad. Direct hit bad. I'm not even going to look at that, just bag it and toss it and we'll write it off as bio-waste.

Later that day, I get a call from my boss and he's pissed that we didn't attempt to clean it up. I tell him nope, not going to happen and if he's concerned about it, when it happens again I can ask the nurse to send it his way. His tune immediately changes to, well, I guess if it was as bad as they say we should just write it off.

Man, everything about that job really sucked.

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Mister_Brevity@reddit

Just wait’ll you hit a stack of teenager chromebooks with a blacklight

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lowNegativeEmotion@reddit

Your in charge of that ticket.

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razorback6981@reddit

Cats are assholes.

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funktopus@reddit

We once had a laptop get returned that when powered up made the room smell like week old cigar smell. pulled the drive and the laptop went to the recycling skid.

I enjoy cigars but that reeked!

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MorallyDeplorable@reddit

Heh, I've refused to work on a few of those over the years.

Was worse when I worked at a general public PC repair shop forever ago and random people would bring in their gross-ass computers to be fixed, only seen one of those since.

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funktopus@reddit

Oh Lord. I can only imagine the roach droppings you've seen.

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Forgery@reddit

We had a user with a special needs child that brought us their work laptop after the child had urinated on it.

It's just not the kind of stuff you thought you'd have to deal with when picking an IT job.

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santaclaws_@reddit

Look straight at the kid and say, "Urine trouble now kid!"

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

I was sent outside to rid the manager's office of a hornet nest on my interview. Let me say again, my interview. I got a can of WD40 and a lighter and set that shit on fire, then knocked if off the inside of the roof with a stick. They hired me on the spot.

I am in Florida

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what_dat_ninja@reddit

Sure, we do bit locker on everything, but I'm still crossing every t and dotting every i on data destruction, I don't pinch pennies there.

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what_dat_ninja@reddit

Did you pull the drive? That would be my only concern before tossing.

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

The "bin" is for our e-waste recycler. They charge a bit extra if we leave the drive in, but it's minimal, and unbelievably worth it in this case.

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what_dat_ninja@reddit

Fair enough, 100% reasonable then. My only concern was data destruction.

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Shipkiller-in-theory@reddit

Data at rest full drive encryption =D

We do pull ours and ship them to DISA for disposal. Bit of a PITA when we do a technical refresh

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itspie@reddit

Re-assign to the same dept...

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SanguineJim@reddit (OP)

Those devices do, in fact, come out of their budget.

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stands_in_piss@reddit

LOL, prob my second week in i got a ticket for a laptop that the user said his cat urinated on. It was the second time in a year it had happened to the guy and we ended up replacing it w another laptop and sending his old one back to Dell. I got an email back quickly from Dell once it arrived saying they determined they couldn't repair it and sent us back a refurbished version of that model.

When he was due for an upgrade, we opened up the replacement laptop he had got and sure enough it reeked of cat urine lol. Not drenched like the last one or bad enough for a ticket, but there were spots on the mobo with sticky residue. Not fun and directors were involved if I recall lol

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CrapSandwich@reddit

Username checks out

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havermyer@reddit

Over 10 years ago, a user handed me a phone that wasn't working. I did the usual thing, pressed a few buttons, sure enough, no response. I noticed that it felt maybe slightly greasier than normal (could sort of see that oil sheen on the screen).

Anyway, I asked the user if it had been subjected to any physical damage, and she said something like 'not really, but it fell in the toilet.'

I immediately left to wash my hands.

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Secret_Account07@reddit

I love how everything is ITs problem

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gruftwerk@reddit

Man I've had people complain that the charging cable for a MacBook wasn't new (they pulled it out of the box with the little paper protection things still on it and said "it feels weird, like someone powdered it. Can I have a different one?"

People are odd and clueless.

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Breitsol_Victor@reddit

I work in healthcare. We were changing platforms and I had to download and email the procedure for a “clean catch” urine sample. Blocked by the firewall for words. Proper anatomical words.

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Pyrostasis@reddit

Well Meow I think you handled that quite well.

Not Piss-poor at all.

Also yeah thats gross and a fuck no from me. If its got bodily fluids on it you can take it and fuck right off.

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Ssakaa@reddit

Also yeah thats gross and a fuck no from me. If its got bodily fluids on it you can take it and fuck right off.

Well that just risks a really viscous cycle.

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Sprucecaboose2@reddit

As a multi cat owner myself, how did the loanee even bring that back? I'd be mortified and asking if I could pay for the replacement of the device. That's just irresponsible and nasty.

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MedicatedLiver@reddit

Legit, anyone else remember around 2010-2013 getting all those Dell laptops with the plastic degradation issue that made the actual machine smell of cat piss?

Around that same time, New Balance was having a similar issue with the glue in their shoes..... 2010 : The Year ~~We Make Contact~~ Everything Smelled Like Piss.

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