When you work in tech support, the first step in any troubleshooting is gathering information about the problem.

What would you do if the caller reporting an issue refused to tell you anything about what isn’t working and just demanded that you fix it.

That is what happened to the tech guy in this story, and after a lot of frustration, he determined that it was just that the caller wasn’t dialing enough numbers to make a call.

“THE SERVER IS DOWN YOU NEED TO FIX THIS NOW”

Here’s another tale from the out of hours hell desk… This gem happened a few days ago.

Me: Service Desk

Come on, you have to give a lot more detail than that.

Caller: THE SERVER IS DOWN YOU NEED TO FIX THIS NOW

Me: Which server are you referring to?

Caller: THE SERVER!

Freaking out isn’t going to fix it faster.

Me: okay… what is it that you are trying to do?

Caller: TRYING TO ACCESS THE SERVER

(yes, she was SHOUTING the entire time)

He needs to get her to calm down and give her information he can work with.

Me: Please can you stop shouting at me and tell me which server you are talking about or what it is that you are trying to do? This company has many different servers for different things, I need to know exactly what isn’t working?

Caller: HOLY CRAP THE SERVER ISN’T WORKING. THE. SERVER. ISN’T. WORKING. YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME.

(In the background I’ve already loaded up our server monitoring tools – no alerts)

He is doing everything he can to help.

Me: I’ve checked our monitoring, I’m not seeing any servers as being down. Which department are you calling from?

Caller: IRRELEVANT. FIX THE SERVER NOW.

Me: Can I get your Staff ID please?

Wow, apparently the caller knows more than the tech support.

Caller: IRRELEVANT. click

10 minutes later…

Me: Service Desk

Not you again.

Caller: HOLY CRAP THE SERVER IS STILL DOWN!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT THIS?

Me: Nothing.

What do you expect him to do?

Caller: EXCUSE ME? NOTHING?

Me: You still haven’t told me which server is down or what is not actually working?

How was that obvious at all?

Caller: YOU PEOPLE! IT’S OBVIOUS MY PHONE ISN’T WORKING I CAN’T MAKE CALLS. THE SERVER HAS GONE DOWN YOU NEED TO CALL YOUR PEOPLE AND FIX THIS.

Me: Ma’am I can see you are calling me from your Desk Phone, is that correct?

Caller: YES!

Me: and this is the phone you can not make calls from, correct?

Oh really? How are they talking then?

Caller: YES!

Me: …

This shouldn’t be that hard.

Me: Do you see why I’m having trouble understanding the problem?

Caller: THE SERVER IS DOWN I CAN’T CALL This Number 5557.

This isn’t a server problem.

Me: Ma’am that number is 3 digits short of a valid number, that is why the call is not connecting.

Caller: LISTEN THE SERVER IS OBVIOUSLY DOWN. I’LL HAVE MY PEOPLE CALL YOUR PEOPLE ABOUT THIS! click

I love my job. I love my job. I love my job.

Dealing with people like this would be so frustrating. I can’t understand how that caller thought they were giving enough information to get this fixed.

Check out what the people in the comments had to say about this story.

This would be so frustrating.

Yup, they think they know how to play the system.

Here’s a good idea.

Just fix it, use magic.

And the funny thing is it is almost never a server that is down.

Tech support isn’t magic, you have to explain the problem you’re having.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.