Shutterstock

Imagine working in tech support and doing everything asked of you to resolve tickets about various technical issues. What would you do if someone asked to speak to your supervisor? Would you pass the number along, or would you try to work out the issue without escalating the call?

In this story, one tech support worker is in this situation, and she gives the caller her supervisor’s number. It was quite an ominous call with no details about what was wrong or what the issue was; however, she had previously helped him with two printers.

Now, she can’t help but wonder if he was complaining about her to the supervisor.

Keep reading for all the details.

“Can I talk to your supervisor?”

I received a request from a faculty member who wanted two printers ordered for his department. One was a standard color printer, the other a 3D printer.

It’s approved but need to know what kind, as this faculty is somewhat tech-savvy and can be particular about things.

He provides the links to the two he wants ordered, and I have them ordered.

Learning something new can sometimes be more frustrating than fun.

When I get them in, I open up the 3D printer and try to figure out how everything is supposed to work.

I’ve never worked on one before so I figured this would be fun for me, although some parts of it ended up being frustrating to set up and actually print.

I read the manual and watched video tutorials online for that model, and could not get it to print a model correctly.

It seemed like everything was set.

I emailed the faculty:

$Me: I have followed the instructions on putting this 3D printer together but I cannot get it to print properly. Are you experienced at all with 3D printers? Also, for the color printer, does this need to be networked or a USB printer?

$FM: Yeah I know how to use that kind of printer. I just need them delivered to the area they’re going to be set up in and I can do the rest.

Say no more.

I deliver them to the designated area leaving a USB cable, as I’m sure he just needs a printer in that building he can hook his laptop up to. I record the specs and close the ticket.

There was another problem.

A couple of weeks later I get a ticket from faculty stating that the color printer needs to be networked.

sigh It’d be great if we could avoid duplicate work orders if people told us what they wanted from the beginning, but I’m used to this as part of the job.

I work with networking to get it an IP address, email it to him, and close the ticket letting him know to contact me with any issues.

His previous emails to me imply that he is competent enough to add a network printer to his laptop, as our users have admin rights to add printers (we’re just now getting print servers that would not require adding printers manually, and this was last winter).

This is ominous.

I get a vague call from him a week later.

$FM: Who is your supervisor?

$Me: Her name is AD.

$FM: Okay I need to send her an email.

I wonder what he said to the supervisor.

And from there he hangs up. He doesn’t tell me if he had an issue with me or the way I handled his tickets, and I didn’t really get a chance to ask him.

We are not allowed to give our direct extensions unless it’s within our department, but people are smart enough that they can look them up in our directory and get their phone number. This is how I defer complaints that should go to one of my supervisors without actually giving out the number.

To this day, I have no idea if it was related at all or not to my work, but it kinda made me feel like he was going to tell her about me without actually telling me any issues (most people who cold call me to complain tell me about the issue even if it’s not related to me).

I go to my supervisor after that to warn her about it in case it’s about me, but I never did hear anymore about it.

As the saying goes, no news is good news. If he had something bad to say, the supervisor was smart enough to know it was a ridiculous complaint. Maybe he just had a question. I guess we’ll never know.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this situation.

It can be stressful to wait, and you may never find out what it was about.

One person was disappointed.

Another person was expecting more drama.

This person has a theory.

That last comment is interesting. It’s possible that he was having an issue that he didn’t know how to solve but had previously pretended he knew how to solve and simply didn’t want to admit that he lied about his knowledge of technology. Or, maybe he didn’t know how to get the 3D printer to work, and since OP had previously admitted that she’s not sure how to do it either, he simply asked for a supervisor.

If the supervisor doesn’t tell her what it was about, it probably wasn’t anything important. Not knowing can be stressful though.