Customer Blamed A Slow Server On Lack Of RAM, But An IT Worker Discovered He Was Using It To Play GTA Vice City
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Some people are so sure they know what’s wrong that they don’t really want tech support to troubleshoot anything.
That was definitely the case for one IT worker who got a call from a user convinced his company server just needed more RAM.
The worker tried to explain that the server hadn’t been restarted in a year and that should probably come first.
But the user wasn’t having it and even threatened to call his manager.
Then the worker logged into the server and noticed one process using most of the memory.
Read on to see what was really causing the problem.
User: If restarting is your solution, I will better call my son, and after that your **** manager.
It all begins with the most ambiguous email title for an issue: “Subject: Fix Server asap Please Fix server”
So I called this user.
I asked him to be more specific about what was happening. He told me that his applications were not working properly on his IIS server. There was poor performance, making everything partially down, and then, as he wasn’t the developer, he transferred me to this guy… The star of this story.
From the start, the customer was very rude.
The first time I was talking with this guy, he didn’t even say hi or good morning… The first words I heard from him were:
User: Listen, dude, let’s make this quick. Just send someone to put more RAM in this server. With time, our applications got bigger and heavier. We require more memory because we need everything that’s running right now. If you provide more RAM, this will disappear. It’s simple logic. You get it?
Deycko: Sounds fair, but first I have to take a look and make that decision on my own.
User: Dude, I just gave you the reason. If you install the RAM, everything is going to be OK. You say you got it.
When he brought up a restart, the guy began acting very strange.
Deycko: According to the system, the last time that server was shut down was 1 year ago, so probably we will have to restart the server and see how it goes after that… Your applications are not accessible and are currently down, so there is no risk or impact here.
User: Oh, no, no, no, dude, no… What’s wrong with you? That’s your solution? If restarting is your solution, I will better call my son, and after that, your **** manager. You cannot be serious. I refuse to do such a thing. You have no right to say there is no impact. You don’t know anything.
At this point, I was getting upset, but I’m not the kind of guy that shows his anger that easily. Actually, I become nicer, probably in a sarcastic mode, but nicer.
Deycko: All right, sir. I will show you why a restart is needed. I will connect to your server remotely and… (interruption)
As it turns out, he was doing something very… important.
User: No. You cannot access my server. That’s MY SERVER. It has a password that only I know, and there is no way I can give you that password.
Deycko: No problem, sir. If you are using the corporate intranet, I don’t need your credentials.
User: But…
Just after I was logging into that server, I noticed something weird in the taskbar. There was a process running that was consuming almost 70% of the memory, and that process was, prepare yourselves:
GTA VICE CITY
Then, the guy got called out.
…So this ********* wanted more RAM to play video games on one of the servers of the company. He was about to beat the game (as I also played it in the past), and it was frozen when he was trying to save his progress, apparently, so that was maybe the reason he was not OK with performing a restart of the server.
I was shocked. This dude was so rude to me because he was playing a game and it got frozen.
Deycko: Dude, are you playing GTA Vice City?
User goes offline.
Hilarious! Now that was a funny twist!
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Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit have to say about it.
Yes, more than likely.
Well, he didn’t think that through.
Here’s what this reader would do.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who gets problematic overtime changes reversed by pointing out how it will harm the company’s bottom line.
Great question.
What an idiot!
There’s nothing wrong with thinking you know what the problem is, but you should never argue with the person trying to help you.
Especially when you know there’s something running on the server that probably shouldn’t be there.
Maybe next time, he’ll think everything through before getting an attitude.
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