I.T Never Ends (my game about IT support in Hell) started here. I'd like to add more of you guys as ingame characters with your jobs and stories.
Posted by Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 104 comments
Hey TFTS
My horror/comedy game about doing IT support in Hell started with an idea from reading the stories on this sub. Also, the two posts you guys allowed me to make since December have been extremely instrumental in getting attention and momentum for the game, which means I'm currently sitting at almost 15.000 wishlists before the game's launch in august. Also more than 25.000 people have played the demo since it came out. It's completely overwhelming for a solo developer like me, and it's in large part due to you guys. Thank you very, very much for that!
I'm posting here again because two days ago, I read a story here by Filco about a coffee machine dispensing ants.
This coincided with me literally just having drawn and animated a coffee machine for the game and the story practically was made to be part of the game. I got Filco's permission to put his story (and himself) into the game. So now he's Filippo - Technician and the player has a chance to stumble across his 3-part story arc as they play the game.
Working on that gave me an idea. I'd really like to add more of you guys and your stories to the game.
How it works:
- Drop your tech support story in the comments.
- If they're a fun fit for the tone/style of the game, I'll ask you super nicely to be part of the game.
- I will draw a custom character portrait to represent you and make a little story arc fitting in your tickets.
- Depending on whether/how many of you guys like the idea, we can do a dedicated reddit/TFTS section in the game's credits listing everyone. I'd like that a lot!
Really hope you guys like the idea!
homelab13@reddit
Not sure how it would go in your game, but here is an fun one from a few years ago.
During the covid shutdowns, my company warehouses shipped medical supplies so we were "essential workers" and stayed open through it all. One of the safety measures put in place was setting up camera alerts through our CCTV system that would flag any instance of employees breaking the 6ft rule.
At my site specifically, there was 1 camera that flagged "ghosts" all the time. Tickets would get cut to the safety team to review footage and speak to the offending employees, but it would always be a single employee and an empty box where the camera indicated the second person was, so all these tickets would get bounced to IT so we could troubleshoot the error.
We re-calibrated the camera twice. We replaced it. We upgraded firmware, we downgraded firmware. Nothing worked. It became common knowledge that there was just a ghost in that area of the warehouse that would follow employees too closely or stand in the middle of the pathway and flag everyone that walks by. IT and maintenance would high-five the air as we walked that area in hopes we could get a screenshot of the recording showing us high-fiving a ghost.
Turned out to be the TV on the same wall below the camera. It was just out of view, but it displayed a slideshow of covid safety protocols and one slide for some reason would trigger the camera to think a person was in view. If that slide popped up right as someone passed in front of the TV, the camera would send out the ticket that people were too close together.
cas13f@reddit
I literally just had to help a user with a pc that would continually change it's language to Arabic. No changes would stick. I'd change it to English, like 3/4 of it would comply. Funny enough, the only language pack installed was EN-US! Logs didnt even show that the change ever happened, it just did it. And two days later, the part that DID change back, was right back to Arabic. I had to move the user to a new pc, then beseech the machine spirits to not continue the trend when I reimage it!
crueller@reddit
I worked with a bunch of new hires. I wasn't "officially" technical support, but I was their direct supervisor and could usually fix most things for them faster if I did it myself.
COUNTLESS times stuff wasn't working and I would come over to help them. I would have them walk me through the problem and show me what they tried. 99% of the time, the problem fixed itself while I was standing there, without having touched a thing. Eventually a (good natured) rumor spread around that I had voodoo powers and had hexed everyone's computers so they would act up but only when I wasn't watching.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
OH sick. Can we add you as a WIFI Voodoo Witch/doctor? Let me know in a dm if you're up for it!
Fortune_Silver@reddit
Not really a "story" per se, but we used to get tasked with decommissioning old hard drives.
We did this with a huge hammer. We had a label on it, it was referred to as the "Manual Shutdown" We'd take old hard drives outside onto the concrete, then smash them with the hammer until you could shake them and they'd sound like Maracas.
Computer not responding? Manual Shutdown. 100% success rate at turning off frozen machines. Turning them back on afterwards, we're still working on that.
TararaBoomDA@reddit
Don't know if this fits your game aesthetic, but I used to swap jokes with our IT guru about sprinkling recalcitrant PCs with holy water, or sacrificing a chicken to appease the Tech Gods.
Fortune_Silver@reddit
Our running joke anytime something was giving us trouble was to sacrifice a printer to the IT gods.
The Ink must flow!
Cozenedlndigo@reddit
I live in an area that is plagued by lizards and tropical storms. Our "Plan D" ISP in case of emergency is Starlink. We've had it for about two years now and thankfully have not needed it so the router has just been sitting in the server room.
Lizards have a habit of getting stuck in the server room and freezing to death so for the past two years whenever I come across a dried out lizard I sacrifice it to the Altar of Elon. I'm not claiming that this has an effect on the weather; but like I said, we haven't had to actually use Starlink in the past two years so...
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Oh absolutely! This one is a shoe in. If you'd like to have your likeness/character portrait be part of a holy water/ pc priest / exorcism story arc, let me know / drop me a dm!
Dakduif@reddit
Once, a colleague brought back a bottle of holy Lourdes water his mom got on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. We hung it from the monitor on the wall that showed our monitoring (we used PRTG, but imagine something like Zabbix if that's more familiar to you).
Don't know if it ever helped 'bless' our environment, no one on the rest of the team was a particularly devout Christian anyway.
But, when that office moved to another location, no one dared throw that bottle away when clearing out! Too superstitious. And no one wanted to pack it. We left it in a cabinet for the next occupants to find. đ
trro16p@reddit
oh! if the exorcism fails the device becomes 'possessed' and starts attacking the IT staff.
you can create 'incantations' (shell script code) when dealing with a 'possessed' computer/server! But you need to find the BOFH's book of code in order to use them!
TararaBoomDA@reddit
I'm perfectly happy just having contributed a small bit of content to your game.
rezwrrd@reddit
My coworkers often joke that I'm going to need to bring "the big hammer" to fix any particularly gnarly PC issue. Hey, I only did that once...
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Big Hammer tech guy sounds like a fun side character! Kinda dwarven! Drop me a line if I can put you in the game as a hammer dwarf âď¸
rezwrrd@reddit
Sure thing! đ¨đ§
I suppose I could share the story behind the one time... The office I worked at used these little crappy eMachines PCs, and the office manager had been having weird intermittent issues with hers for a while. I fixed them as well as I could, but eventually decided it was time to replace the machine, and I sourced amuch better replacement and set it up. Considering the frustration the old computer had caused the office manager plus the fact that I had already put in my two weeks, I went and grabbed the twelve-pound concrete buster sledgehammer from the workshop downstairs. I'm not talking about your grandpa's dinky little claw hammer here, this was a beast of a chunk of steel with a three-foot handle that would make King Dedede proud. We threw that piece of junk PC on the floor and went full Office Space on it. Â
In hindsight we probably shouldn't have smashed the computer in the office since that big hammer could have put a dent in the floor if we missed, but we didn't miss. Little plastic pieces went everywhere like watermelon guts at a Gallagher show. Last I heard the office manager still has the CD tray on her desk as a trophy (and a warning).
TararaBoomDA@reddit
Mjolnir!
skiing123@reddit
So many sacrifices to both the old gods and new. Those printers Gods though they can cast me into hell. I won't support their evil
ConfidentCobbler23@reddit
I was in an open plan office once when someone spilled water over their keyboard. At exactly the same time, someone in a far corner called out that their PC had crashed. I told them, with a pretty good poker face, that it was the water spill that caused their PC to crash, and they believed me. I validated it by saying that everything was connected on the network.
Also had a situation where someone spilt a drink on their phone. They didn't tell anyone and cleaned it up as best they could. The following day the entire phone system started crashing. It turned out to be water inside the phone was causing a short and taking the entire system with it.
Cozenedlndigo@reddit
Once I answered a call from "Bernice" about her new mouse not working. When I arrived at her desk I found a corded mouse plugged straight into the wall via a usb wall charger.
Tech_Witch@reddit
Maybe the story i wroteup years ago that got me my reddit handle could fit? I ressurrected a dead mp3 player with a killer cord, a prayer to the omissiah and a heck of a lot of voltage.
When more magic is the solution : r/talesfromtechsupport
Dejue@reddit
This is what I posted a little bit ago, but I got a ticket on a Friday afternoon from a senior VP that just said âFixâ with a picture of their desk taken from the doorway. I went to their office and checked everything that I could think of. Their computer was working, their printer was working, even the fax machine that they insisted on having was working. I went to talk to my manager and he tried contacting the VP, but he had left for vacation for a week already and wasnât answering his phone. After he gets back that Monday, he comes storming into the IT office yelling how âhis ticket isnât resolvedâ and âitâs still not workingâ and âwhy hasnât it been fixedâ. When I go with him to figure out what the problem was, it turns out the lightbulb had burned out in his desk lamp and he was demanding that IT replace it. I never noticed, because I just turned on the overhead lights when I went into the office. My manager ended up handling it.
Salavora_M@reddit
Hope I am not too late, but I have a few:
- Got a user to "blow into his router cable to remove the dust" (after he did not want to remove the power cable from his router in order to restart it....)Dusty cables : r/talesfromtechsupport
- Did A TON of work, that I wouldn't have needed to do, if I had just asked the user once instead of trusting everyone else: How asking one simple question could have safed me days of work : r/talesfromtechsupport
- Needed to dress up in hyginic pretective gear and find my way through the plant... in order to restock paper, because the error message "was to technical": Error Messages are way too complicated! Help me now! : r/talesfromtechsupport
And thansk for posting again! Forgot to add the game to my watchlist before!
Stellapacifica@reddit
I'm gonna be playing the demo as soon as I'm back home, I can't believe I didn't hear about it sooner!
Let's see... How about the time I was asked to spec out a basic switch for a room that suddenly had more users than jacks? I provided a nice three-option list, with details on cost and benefits for each one.
My boss comes to me a few days later with a box. "I found the same thing but on sale!" She says.
It's a modem.
I got to explain to a 70-something retired linguistics adjunct turned administrative assistant the difference between switches, modems, and routers.
I think I posted the full story when it happened, but I'm on mobile and can't check rn.
underground_avenue@reddit
The college kids working part time threw a installation cd as a frisbee through the office. It hit something and a bit broke off. They continued. They only stopped once the battered disks now very sharp edge embedded itself in the wall right next to one of their faces. The cd shuriken remained in the wall as a reminder until the team lead threw it away.
Feel free to turn this into a bloodsport.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
This one is super scary - I'll add it. Let me know in a dm if you'd want to feature as a character who gets hit by a flying shuriken CD.
soberdude@reddit
It should say "You've got mail" as it decapitates u/underground_avenue
underground_avenue@reddit
It wasn't a laser disc (though there was one lying around somewhere), just a vigorously thrown cd. Slicing a jugular or embedding itself in the skull or an eye would be more realistic.Â
It wasn't even AOL cds. Just drivers that came with all the new laptops they were setting up. Probably network, but I don't remember.Â
soberdude@reddit
Yeah, but AOL CDs would be funny.
underground_avenue@reddit
But it couldn't connect the corpse to the company network.Â
answaiks_voltage@reddit
Support request from a director of nursing. Every time she would hit the Backspace key, the laptop would "turn off."
I tested the laptop, no issues. Reimaged the laptop out of courtesy for her. She called in the next day and it happened again. Swapped the laptop for the same model and sent her on her way. She called in again later that week, laptop mysteriously shutting off again while hitting the backspace key.
I sat with her and watched her type on the laptop. She didn't like having a USB keyboard so she'd type directly on the laptop itself while being docked to her screen. Wouldn't you know as soon as she hit the Backspace key the damn thing would turn off again.
So it turns out it was going to Sleep and not power off. I asked her to hold up her hands and I saw she had a Fitbit on her right wrist. The damn thing had a magnetic clasp on it. Had her remove the Fitbit and the laptop keyboard worked without any issues and the backspace key didn't trigger a Sleep response.
Turned out as she hit the Backspace key, she had the most perfect angle to hit the hall sensor with the magnetic clasp on the fitbit and put the laptop to sleep automatically. Absolutely mind blowing. So now I check everyone's wrists when they complain about weird sleep and power issues on laptops. :)
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Wow that's one of the most esoteric bugs Ive heard of. Really good job of you to catch on to that!
ItsGotToMakeSense@reddit
I don't know if this story is weird enough but maybe it can inspire something weirder. I was onboarding a new client, a medical facility that had recently moved into a building and cheaped out on their wiring. We were using a tone probe to figure their shit out and most of it was pretty straightforward except for this one single port.
We couldn't figure out where on the patch panel it led to, or if it did at all. When you put the transmitter into it, your wand would beep. EVERYWHERE. You could wave the wand in the air, anywhere near any wall, and it would give a positive beep.
We killed that outlet and sealed it over. Who knows what still lurks in those walls...
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
oh I love this one. Could we do something like this?
User reports that their desk phone 'whispers' when it's on the hook. Upon investigation with a tone probe, the entire North Wing of the facility is broadcasting a 1kHz sine wave. We discover Port 88 is cross-connected directly to the buildingâs steel frame. When you finally "kill" the outlet, the building's smart HVAC system starts throwing errors in Latin
let me know if you're up for it - we can add you in as a tone probe operator or something?
JohnnyMiskatonic@reddit
Here's my last story.
I'm cruising along in hour nine of my ten-hour support shift when an Urgent ticket comes in from a VP: "My color printer won't print in color, I have color ink, I need to print color documents for litigation."
It's 4:15pm on a Tuesday. I thought about letting it go until the next morning but figured "nah, probably just a simple configuration issue, she's a VP, earn some brownie points" and opened a remote session.
An hour later, I had checked her configurations, uninstalled and reinstalled the printer, installed two different drivers, all to no avail. In desperation, I downloaded the original HP driver from 2015. After it installed, it still wouldn't print in color, but it DID notify me that it was out of magenta ink.
Me- Trying very hard to be diplomatic: "The software thinks it's out of magenta ink, it says the levels may not be accurate, so maybe it's not, but go ahead and replace the ink cartridge and test it."
VP: "I don't need to print magenta, I just need blue and green."
Me: "...... Ah. Well, I suspect that the printer is designed so that if ANY of the ink colors are out, it only prints in black and white."
VP: "I'll have to order some, I don't have any cartridges here."
Me: "Then I'll leave this ticket pending, just in case that doesn't solve the problem." Goddamn, I'm diplomatic. I crawled away from my desk, further convinced that every VP in this company is Very Special, and not in a good way.
K-o-R@reddit
That's a benevolent printer if it still lets you print mono with a colour cartridge out...
Gabarnn@reddit
>helpdesk at hospital
>old pc 'running slow' (multiple years in room with thick carpet)
>bring back to maintenance and open up
>DUST TORNADO
mistakes were made
Dakduif@reddit
Reminds me of a coworker who told me of the 'running slow' PC he retrieved from the room where they apply and remove casts for broken limbs.
He opened it up and guess what: perfect PC-inner-parts shaped gypsum cast found inside. đ Years of dust from the casts had accumulated inside.
He cleaned it up and put it back. Hospital wasn't interested in thinking of an alternative.
Dakduif@reddit
When I still worked Servicedesk, I once had a strange call.
We were having a massive storm in the country, prompting a lot of users to work from home (this was pre-covid when WFH was less common).
Users had to receive an RSA token by text on their phone before logging into Citrix (as an MFA measure).
One user called that they weren't receiving the token. I went through all troubleshooting steps, sending test texts from the RSA management software and even looking up manuals for the phone to see if there were any cellular network settings that could work..
In the end, texts would slowly bleed through, but always too late and they were overwritten by newer requests anyway once they arrived.
Eventually I asked the user where they lived and if they knew where the cell phone masts were located. Ah, user lived in bumfuck-nowhere and, I kid you not, any network masts were located down wind from where he lived.
So we eventually concluded that the wind was interfering with the signal so much, that his tokens were being blown away. đ Nothing he could do but wait it out or get lucky. He was surprisingly chill about it thankfully.
nobody_smart@reddit
My best story would be during my college internship. One of my tasks was moving people to different cubes around the office. One of the things I had to do was to run RS232 cable through the ceiling going from one punch block to another.
I would occasionally find tools that my predecessors lost, small dead rodents, dead bugs and exposed wires.
A frequent hazard I faced was finding my predecessor's abandoned coffee cup on a ceiling tile. Cold, moldy, fuzzy sometimes. On occasion it would fall off the tile I was lifting and pour onto me.
If I think of anything else, I'll let you know.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
There's a lot of dead mice, ants, critters in general in the game. Let me know in a dm if you'd be okay with being featured as Pest Control đ
nobody_smart@reddit
Nah, you don't have to give me credit..I was just hoping to provide you with material. Best of luck with the game.
rezwrrd@reddit
Wow, I've seen a couple of complete mouse skeletons and the occasional large bucket under a leaking pipe, but the coffee one is new. Even as an inveterate workplace snacker I can't imagine wanting to eat or drink anything while up there. I've seen too much.
nobody_smart@reddit
While there was a proper server room, as an intern I couldn't be in there by myself. After the first couple weeks with my trainer, I had to be escorted by a low intelligence guy from the mail room who was a family member of the part owner / CTO. Then there was the "Government Contract " server room, and I wasn't allowed in there at all but had to communicate to my mail-room cohort what had to get done in there.
nobody_smart@reddit
Another story that included that mail-room guy: Government Billing was printed on the 10th through 15th of the month. The government billing had to be printed on 3-ply carbon copy paper on a dot matrix printer. It was that mail room guy's job to keep fresh ribbons in the dot matrix printers. The ribbons and the toner cartridges for the HP LaserJet 5s for regular billing would come in the same shipment to the mail-room. But there wasn't enough storage space in the government server room to store them so they got stored in the regular print room.
Regular billing ran almost constantly. One of my mid-day and end-day tasks was to assist in the regular print room with occasionally taking out a toner cartridge and shaking it. This would get a noticeable amount more bills or envelopes per cartridge for each of the 8 LaserJets. We had plastic bags that we would put the cartridge into before shaking, because there was a risk of leakage. We had a sticky note system of which cartridge had gotten shaken how many times. After so many pages, the cartridge was done and had to be swapped.
The comedy here was that occasionally:
(1) toner would still leak.
(2) the mail room guy would rush into the print room on a panic making someone help him find more dot-matrix ribbon because a government printer stopped.
(3) when mail room guy would come in, he'd throw the toner-sticky note system into disarray.
(4) The LaserJet printers still got low on toner and would stop printing until one of us in IT wandered by to check on them or one of the billing people noticed while picking up a batch of printouts.
nobody_smart@reddit
Another task I had at that internship was to take out of warranty VT200 terminals (dumb terminals) figure out which of several components had gone bad and swap them around to get good parts together and have a working terminal. I used a diagnostic box to see if the modem was good, a known good video controller to see if the CRT was good and vice-versa, and dumb luck with a wonky multi-meter for the other component (can't remember name) and fan. If you need to add historical accuracy, some of these terminals had survived the 1993 flood in the US since they float. There was risk of electrocution from latent charges in capacitors or from frayed wires.
Awlson@reddit
I work in K12 IT, and have had so many weird encounters at work.. but I can't think of a single one from work right now. Instead, i have a unique one from a dentist visit about a month ago.
So the dentist i go to has upgraded his office a bunch, he is in a nice area in the suburbs, and has made his office fancy, with tvs with a roku attached to them in each patient area. i(I have no idea why, hard to see when in a dentist chair. So there i am in the chair, mouth open being worked on, and i hear a ladies voice, and she is telling the dentist to turn off the tv/roku, because it has stolen the IP for the server. Even the dental assistant said that didn't make sense. And I sadly could not even agree with her.
I called a buddy that works in IT also right after i left that office, and told him the story. Now our running joke is about being "roku'd".
StarSlayerX@reddit
I worked at a support engineer for an MSP. We had a client that was going bankrupt and the final project was to decommission the remaining PCs. Then remove the old server back to office to virtualize in Azure.
No one wanted the project because it was all manual labor for one engineer and a shitshow of a company. I unfortunately physically drew the shortest straw when the project manager told us one of us has to take it.
So off I go to the office, shutting down PCs, moving monitors and Desktops in my wagon the company vehicle.
Time to pull out the three rack mounted server. I use the KVM to shutdown the servers. I pulled the first server half way off the rack and a colony of roaches literally scattered right in front of me. Apparently when a company goes bankrupt, Pest Control is the first service to go....
Awlson@reddit
I have played the demo, and roaches in the server would fit right in!
Gambatte@reddit
Where do I even start?
fsckto fix the broken partition table and get the equipment working again? Great, thanks, we're still gonna wait for the replacement part from Japan, should only be another six monthsMercas@reddit
This is slightly two stories in one. A few years back we had just deployed a new laptop / desk setup to a user. Everything worked great and it was a model we had deployed multiple times with no issues. User called in almost immediately, computer keeps turning off when I am using it. We sent over a lvl 1 to look at it, no issues and couldnât replicate it. This happened a few times throughout the week before I was called in to look at the issue.
I went to the users office and sat down, double checked drivers and windows updates, everything looked good. I used the machine for 20 minutes with no issues and as I was waiting around I talking to the user about the holidays and how they were, thatâs when they mentioned their nice new bracelet.
âSynapse starts to fire and I remember a story from an old TFTS writer about a nock off watch and how a user complained that their desktop had to be turned on with a stick to actually boot. That tech had no issues and ultimately discovered that the watch was a very cheap nock off and had such a strong magnetic pulse that it was killing the machine at boot. â
I then ask the user to sit and use her computer, sure enough her new bracelet had a magnetic clasp and every time she went to use the laptop it triggered the laptop lid close sensor thus putting the machine in standby. A quick explanation and an offer for an external keyboard and the user never had any issues again.
AccurateLover@reddit
EstĂĄ en espaĂąol?
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Not currently sorry - there's 100.000+ words in the game (about the size of your average novel) and translating all that is pretty daunting when you're just 1 guy in his living room...
NightShade2542@reddit
Iâm too new to IT to really have stories of my own, the craziest I can think of is my coworker receiving a returned iPad that apparently had gone through a deep frier.
I would suggest that one story posted here a bit ago though, where they were dealing with a âpossessedâ printer, where it would print random gibberish every night while no one was there. And it ended up being someone had set up a print job that had an error or something
Terranovian_M@reddit
One morning I received a call earlier than usual. The phone number showed up as the client's name, so I knew exactly who was calling.
However, when I answered, there was nothing. Not quite silence, just the particular, unsettling emptiness of a line held open by an unseen presence.
Usually in these scenarios I would hang up and call back. But something stopped me this time. Instinct, or perhaps a strange feeling in my gut, I thought maybe they could hear me, I just couldn't hear them.
So I said: "I do apologise, but I cannot hear you. If you can hear me and are experiencing microphone issues, please stay on the line. If you can hear me and have called for another reason, please hang up and call again. If however I am talking to myself and you cannot hear any of this... well, I guess I'm a little crazy you do you."
As expected, there was no response. But no disconnection either. So I found which computer they were logged onto, reached out across the network, and remotely connected and there on their screen I saw it: the active call with myself, my own voice trapped in a little window, staring back at me. Good sign I was on the right path.
I proceeded to check the Windows audio settings and Teams audio settings.
The sound output was going through their monitor rather than their headphones, and the microphone input was set to the same monitor, a monitor without a microphone, a monitor without ears. I switched it over to their headset, and instantly the call was filled with laughter.
I had resolved the issue, and they had heard every word of my little soliloquy into the void. I had done all that without hearing a single word from the customer.
To this day, I have no idea how I knew. But somehow, I did.
justaminion32@reddit
I love this idea. Now I have to go find Filippo!
At_a_Snails_Pace@reddit
I work in higher education audiovisual technology. We get lots of wild calls, but a few of my favorites are the following:
Prof. Vs AV room poltergeist: throughout a semester one professor would regularly call to report that the screen, projector, Lights, shades and touch panel were âgoing crazy, turning on and off going up and down. Uncontrollableâ. Technician dispatched each time, workaround set up for class. Return to space for troubleshooting hours later, no issue to be found.
Another one involves a prof who calls in to report that someone else was teaching in their room, but they are the only teacher there. Confused, they help clarify by saying there is a ghost in the speaker system and another instructor is lecturing my class and I canât teach because of it. Make it stop. We had the prof mute the audio system for her class.
We did figure out these fun issues, but AV technology always leans towards the spooky side of life. So many funny, eerie, and unexplainable stories.
WalkAboutFarms@reddit
Got called out for calling a C suite an idiot. HR got involved and ask for an apology "I'm sorry you're an idiot."
Cygnata@reddit
I have one! It happened to my trainer. We rented PCs to businesses, to use for our shipping program. These were big 386s.
One day, he gets a frantic woman on the line with a THICK accent.
Woman: "HELP! HELP! My computer won't wake up!"
Tech: "Calm down, ma'am, I can help you. Can I get some information about the problem?"
W: "It won't wake up! I fed it and it won't wake up!"
T: *thinking she had "fed" it a floppy. "Let's calm down, and try to troubleshoot. It won't start up?"
W: "Yes! I fed it rice and it won't wake up!"
T: brain reboot "Excuse me?"
W: "I fed it rice and it won't wake up!"
T: reboot complete "Let me schedule you for a service, ma'am."
He later got the story from the onsite repair techs.
The lady was a devout Shintoist, and was very, very new to computers. (To be fair, this was in the early days of floppies. So they really hadn't been around long.) So she assumed it had a soul. Every time the computer went to sleep, she would feed it actual rice through the A drive. She had been doing this for months before it died. The tech replaced the machine and gently taught her that it much preferred to be "fed" floppies instead.
The repair techs reported in when they opened the machine back at the shop. They found rice filling over half of the case. The machine had lasted until some of the rice got burned onto the CPU.
I do appreciate that they respected her beliefs when teaching her. I was told the story circa 2001, and it happened in the early 90s, iirc. I did see a Poloroid photo of the rice-filled case, but sadly that belonged to my trainer.
There was also the guy who shouted at my trainer over the phone, "COME AND GET YOUR PIECE OF S$$$ COMPUTER, IT'LL BE ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE MY OFFICE!!!" This was followed by the sound of a window opening, then a faint CRASH.
Thing was, the guy had refused to give my trainer his shipping number, or any other information. So they couldn't retrieve it. Wonder how long they kept sending him a bill for the rental?
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
This one is insane. "I fed it rice" is madness - can I add this as mini story arc to the game? If that's okay with you and you'd like to be part of the game, shoot me a DM or similar if you have any ideas for what your character portrait should look like
Cygnata@reddit
You may! And I will later today, thank you! ^^
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Awesome! Stoked!
DasAllerletzte@reddit
The Omnissiah is pleased with the first story.Â
No_Vacation1529@reddit
Once a customer reached out to us and he was convinced based on his websites control panel that the site is hosted somewhere else, and asked us to explain what is he exactly paying for.
We had to spend the next several hours convincing him and showing him proof, that yes we are infact hosting his website, and cancelling his services with us WILL bring the site down. Some users...
UnabashedVoice@reddit
"i understand you'd like to cancel your service with us; we're sorry to see you go" kills website "Oh, it turns out you do want to use our services after all? We'll be glad to get that set up for you. Be advised, there is a 72-hour turnaround for onboarding."
Financial-Mess8082@reddit
My favorite tech support story is wholely my fault - to brighten up my day when testing printers, I use an image of the "you've been gnomed" meme. I was doing some testing on a printer in the tech department, but due to a confusing naming scheme sent multiple copies to someone else's office printer, one that they didn't think was working. I'm wondering why my print jobs are showing as complete but nothing is coming out of my printer when five minutes later a very distressed user comes by to inform me there are gnomes coming out of her printer and she's afraid she's been hacked.
trro16p@reddit
Did you consider that side quest/mini game I suggested in one of your other posts about receiving equipment ordered by one department and fending of employees of the other departments until you deployed the equipment?
I thought that it would kinda fit the games theme.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
It's on my list! â¤ď¸
h8redrulz@reddit
Maybe my favorite story was a user who didn't know the names of the programs he used. He insisted he had an issue with "Microwave Office Outlet", but it took a couple minutes of coaxing to find out he was talking about Microsoft Office Outlook.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
dm me if you want your likeness in the game as a "microwave orifice architect"!
AdreKiseque@reddit
COFFEE IS CRUNCHY
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
đ¤Žđ¤Ž
stefonio@reddit
I had a user with a 6 year old laptop that had long ago reached EOL. I gave her a new one and told her to let me know if she needed help setting up her profile.
On session 4 of me making everything in her 3 screens matche exactly the way the old laptop had it, the following conversation ensued:
Exec: "I need to you get rid of... that"Â Â Me: "Get rid of what?"Â Â Â Exec: "You know., that"Â Â Me: "Everything looks normal to me. What exactly is the problem?"Â Â Exec: "It's too distracting"Â Â Me: "The... Are you talking about the wallpaper?"Â Â Exec: "What? No, I just want that gone."
The conversation continued for a couple more minutes. Â
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
I like it - with the twist that the user is seeing a wallpaper staring/blinking at them that we/the it support can't see unless we sit down in her seat and wear her glasses?
stefonio@reddit
Or the laptop screen has become a portal to an eldrich realm, and sitting in her chair allows you to view it at an angle where there actually is something distracting or even potentially threatening happening in there.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Yes! Dm me if you want to be in a mini ingame story arc about just that!
Tower21@reddit
So back nearly 20 years ago I was a geeksquad in-home technician. There are a few stories I have from back then, but one stays in my mind to this day.
I arrive at this house in the suburbs, nice house, kept very clean, owned by a single gentleman I would wager to be around 50 years old. I get the usual speel from him about thinking he has viruses on his laptop.
No problem, I'll run my scanning tools, a series of different virus scanners that take about an hour to scan on the average sized HDD of the time ~160-250 GB.
Customer is the chatty sort so we are in his living room, sitting across from each other, coffee table between us, laptop pointed towards me and we chat as it scans. His screen saver was a slide show of his pictures, I didn't give it much thought at the time, still plenty of time before the scan finishes and I was actually enjoying our conversation.
Many just pictures of landscapes, the occasional picture of what I assume are friends, not really paying attention. Then it changes to this picture of a woman, if assume in her older 40s, early 50s. Pictures appear to be taken in the room I am sitting in, then the next picture appears and she starts to undress, each picture more revealing than the next, I freeze in panic.
I don't want to rush to swipe the touchpad, I don't want to embarrass him, so I try to play it cool, keep up the conversation and when I can get a word in, I say let's she how this is going. In my freezing and subsequently trying to play it cool, I got to watch a slide show strip tease of a lady probably twice my age.
I have no idea to this day if he set me up to see my reaction, or if he was truely oblivious, either way I just felt dirty.
I was already married at the time with 2 kids, that was unwanted.
Was hit on a few times during my years at geeksquad. One last came to the door and said, it's too bad you didn't come 5 minutes earlier, you would have caught me in my underwear.
Another was a couple, the husband was a paralyzed from the neck down. I had three calls to their house over ~ 6 months. The wife would move the conversation to the challenge they had with having sexual relations. The last visit, she went into detail about how it was visual or mental images that would do it for him. She had a vibrator on the kitchen table when I arrived, and was trying to put her hand on my thigh.
I had to phone my booking center to blacklist them.
There are other stories, but those are the ones that would would be easiest to disseminate into a comedic story.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Hilarious and unnerving stuff - I'm trying to keep it PG though đ đ I like the idea of swiping through a photo gallery that gets progressively more bizarre. Hit me up in a dm if you want to be drawn in a 3-ticket arc as someone who sends increasingly unnerving holiday pictures to the company's all@ email
grenade71822@reddit
Blood and other goo from CBC machine drain filled up and shorted out a Digi RS232 to Ethernet terminal server thingy.
One of the lab techs knocked the Digi on to the floor from the shelf on a moveable table, and later in the day when they moved the table to clean behind the machine, the tube for the drain came out of its pipe and started filling up one of the RJ45 ports on the Digi since they landed upright.
Found in the next morning when the CBC machine wasnât talking to our Lab Software.
Amazon order and a few days later, some 2 sided tape, and we were good to go for now.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
That's disgusting and hilarious
davethecompguy@reddit
I did tech support for a PC manufacturer, the one that when you see their laptop upside-down, they think it's a "dy".
Anyway... A home user called because there was smoke coming out of their monitor. I told them to check that it wasn't getting hot (it wasn't), and then unplug it, disconnect it and take it outdoors. Like, out to their driveway. Like, I didn't want to be responsible for their house burning down, you know?
Luckily, that went well. I strongly advised they don't plug it in again, and just replace it. It was out of warranty anyway.
DasAllerletzte@reddit
Wow, I haven't seen such a realistic screensaver ever. Good work guys. (Paraphrased)Â
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
haha I love it. It's so matter of fact. "Computer smoking, please advise".
Let me know if you'd like to be in the game as a character and - if so - what you'd want to look like! I'll cook up some smoking computer related story arc
KeyAdministration573@reddit
15 years in the trenches on the frontline checking in - I have stories for days of the shit I've seen.
Your prompt of tech support in hell recalls a story from a year or 2 ago:
I'm down in our storage cage in the warehouse pulling hard drives out of machines to log into the bin for our data destruction company to come and nuke the drives for us. Machines have been piling up to the point where this has turned from an 'It's not worth the effort to get the tools out and do these one or 2 machines' to 'Well shit we've let this go too long and now this is going to take all morning' I make my way through all the standard desktops and laptops, leaving just one machine left - some one-off custom thing that was mounted in some kind of industrial location doing some kind of industrial who knows what; I didn't pull it out of production, I'm just sending it to the grave. This thing didn't have a case as we traditional know it, but rather was an amalgam of PC components bolted into a box of sharp sheet metal. As I stood there sizing up my final opponent, a thought crossed my mind: "I'm going to cut myself on this fucking thing before we're done, aren't I?" Spoiler alert - I did in fact cut myself on that fucking thing. Mayhaps you could have some kind of overly sharp spiky machine that needs service, but requires you to pay the blood price before you can work on the machine - like it has some kind of demonic face, and you have to spill your blood into its mouth as it cackles manically at you, knowing it's claimed another victim.
QueenAshley296@reddit
I have worked in tech support since my first job
A recurring issue I dealt with was PCs being connected to monitors with webcams with both HDMI and type-c cables by engineers, with the type-c cable doubling up as another video cable
This would make the PC think it's two separate screens, but would send it to two different input sources on the monitor
When they powered on the device it would show screen 1 and whenever they locked the screen and stepped away it would switch to screen 2
Remoting in shows two screens but they only have one
Fix for the issue is to guide user to unplug HDMI cable and turn the screen off and on
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
I'm drawing this one up right now! Can I put you in the game as a character alongside the ghost/double monitor? If so, feel free to DM me or let me know how you'd like your character to look!
QueenAshley296@reddit
That would be absolutely amazing! I'll shoot you a DM now
way22@reddit
I don't currently have a story to add, but man, this thread is pure gold!
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
It's really funny, I'm cackling like a maniac at some of these stories
post_blast@reddit
The customer who thought her CD tray was a cup holder is a rite of passage, but my personal hell was this one.
I picked up and did my usual greeting. Guy did not replay with any analog of "hello" but chose (verbatim): "I have a PhD from Berkley and demand to be treated with the level of respect I deserve." I knew it was going to be bad, but not quite how bad. Chugged though the troubleshooting steps and needed to check a driver, cuz it was always the driver. "OK sir, go ahead and close out of everything."
"OK."
"Now, I need you to right-click on 'My Computer.'"
"OK. C... L... I... C..."
"Sir, what are you doing?"
"You told me to write 'click' on my computer, so I am."
"...please hold."
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
' I have a phd from Berkley, of course I already did write "click" ' is really fun!
Casexcasey@reddit
I'm not sure if this'll work since it's not my story, just something I heard from a friend when I was in college, but maybe like a couple tickets from a user who's having trouble with malware or cookies due to having to visit some sketchy sites for reasons that he swears are "work related".
IslandHistorical952@reddit
I worked IT support at a university. One day a professor of mathematics, who does computations of epic proportions for whatever crazy science he does, called ke, furious and/or scared out of his wits. He tried to start his computer this morning, and it was broken. Nothing. Weeks worth of irreplaceable insights, gone. If we didn't retrieve his data from his hard drive, his career was ruined.
He wanted me to take out the hard drive right away. I asked him to let me at least see the problem first.
The new cleaning crew had turned off the screen.
FoxtrotSierraTango@reddit
Back in high school we had a lab with Win95 machines. Win95 was not incredibly stable and occasionally a machine would forget it had a CD drive. It wasn't common to store the installer CAB files on the hard drive yet and the boot disk that enabled the CD drive in DOS wouldn't be streamlined until Win98. So I spent a lot of time reinstalling Windows from a set of 13 floppy discs.
FoxtrotSierraTango@reddit
The best story from my current job is that I get an escalation from customer service. They're saying the website is down. I press for more information because alarm bells would be going off if that were true. They respond that it's inaccessible for these 5 people (5 being the minimum number of people that need to report a problem before they can engage the internal helpdesk for a systems issue). I ask what troubleshooting was done with the 5 users, they respond that the users are unable to connect to our website, or any other website for that matter. Also all their smart devices are not connecting and their phones don't work on wi-fi.
I take a quick walk. My response SLA is 30 minutes so I'll take 20 to calm down, 2 to write a response, and the last 8 to erase my response where I call them irredeemable idiots and write something more professional.
I then redacted the customer info from the e-mail, printed the thread, paid for a custom frame, and hung it in my home office.
whskid2005@reddit
Tech support adjacent- I handle some of the web apps used at work so I do a lot of âmy password doesnât workâ kinda shit.
The most annoying thing thatâs come up recently are people who say an app (mobile device) isnât working, but refuse to send me a full screenshot. Theyâve learned to put their phone into airplane mode so the app gets a connection error. They send a cropped screenshot to their manager who then is on my case about fixing it.
TLDR: I canât fix your employeeâs doing shady shit and you just blindly trusting them
pearlie_girl@reddit
I was an SRE supporting 80 developers and analysts. At least three times a week, someone would reach out that one of the databases was unresponsive. It was always some wild adhoc process some analyst was running in parallel with tens of thousands of database connections. We were basically DDoS-ing ourselves constantly, sometimes multiple times a day. And it was my job to track that person down and tell them to knock it off.
KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit
There have been a few hellish moments in my career. In one job, my manager was going frantic over a multi-thousand pound stocktake discrepancy that caused hours of stress. When she finally let me look at the all-powerful workbook, I solved it with a couple of click and drag manoeuvres. Or there was the time that a customer called up absolutely frantic because our software was rejecting her time worked, and she needed it to be able to claim back cash from HMGov. That one occupied a whole team, and the external software author, before they tracked down the cause. (It wasn't the software.) In another job, I had to write a recursive function to solve a problem caused by the new IT director's plans to be efficient. If you think any of the above would fit, I'm happy to flesh them out for you.
mafiaknight@reddit
I'm an electrical engineer.
In uni, I helped troubleshoot a classmate's issues:
He had written a program for a project we were assigned.
He kept making adjustments, but they didn't seem to be actually adjusting the equipment.
It had been working the day before, but he was having trouble getting it to update
So, I agreed to take a look-see.
I made a couple test changes, and sure enough, no alteration.
Then I started checking over the hardware. Cables plugged into computer? â
Cables plugged into the arduino? â
Arduino connected to the various components? â
Everything powered? â
Huh...that's odd â
Trace the connection lines physically...
...
...wait a second! Why doesn't this cable connect to anything, and what's connected to the PC?
That's right. One cable connected to the arduino. A completely separate cable connected to the PC. The ends of both just sitting on the floor.
mafiaknight@reddit
Yes. You have my permission to use this story and/or include me in your game
TDLMTH@reddit
Do you have the technically incompetent relative in your game?
My father is absolutely hopeless with computers. Iâm only half joking when I tell people that, if my father can use it without screwing it up or calling for help, youâve got a working UI.
He also hates inconveniencing me, because he knows Iâm busy. On a few occasions, he took his computer elsewhere to get it fixed, and they made even worse Iâm off a mess of things (never trust retail storefront support). The last time he did this I told him 1) I would fix it, 2) as he was prepared to pay hundreds of dollars to get things fixed I was going to take my wife to dinner at a very fine restaurant in the city and send him the bill, and 3) if he ever sent his computer to be touched by anyone else I would never fix anything for him again.
Heâs been relatively well behaved ever since.
Basileus08@reddit
I'm not and never was tech support, but in 1997, I was the guy the came to when there were problems with the rare and expensive equipment.
One day a colleague of mine stated that she couldn't save word files anymore.
I loved into it and realised that she filled the small hard drive up to the last bit. I tried to explain this but she laughed in my face that would not be possible. No understanding of the concept of " full is full".
Maybe not the best story, but one of my first experiences of "the problem sits in front of the monitor."
Scoth42@reddit
I worked in tech support type call center work for almost 15 years, but almost exclusively towards end users/small business internet and telecom type stuff. Plenty of random stories I could share, but I'm not sure any of them really fit a horror theme. If you think that kind of ticket could be worked into it I'll spend some time thinking about it, but most of my stories are more the funny/silly/weird types.
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Honestly I'd love to hear them! The game is hardly scary, more just weird and I'd love to hear your war stories
Euphoric-Series-1194@reddit (OP)
Bit of extra info:
Filco's hilarious ant-coffeee machine story that is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1s2nu7r/vending_machine_didnt_dispense_tea_it_fired_ants/
You can play the demo here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4225400/IT_Never_Ends/ to see if it's something you'd want to be a part of. I really hope you will!
And once again - huge thanks to the mods for allowing me to make this thread.