Source: Pexels/Reddit

What is common sense to some isn’t always the case for others. This seems to be especially true once technology is thrown into the mix.

How would you handle technology-illiterate coworkers at your IT job? One guy recently shared a wild story about his own experience with this on Reddit. Here’s what went down.

User tried to export “all of it”

We have a slightly above average userbase as employees in regard to tech skill.

Though I’ve had to talk some through how to shut down their computers, most are pretty good, especially if we provide a PDF tutorial or something.

That kind of environment is a rarity in the workplace.

However some are very good at their 1 app and have no concept of the totality of what theyre trying.

Recently we were upgrading our user facing report writer.

Simple tool, grab column/row object, drag to report pane, poof data.

One of our better reporting users decided they would use this tool meant for basic reports to make a bigger one so they wouldnt bug us.

Seems like a rational idea.

Sounds helpful but she ran into issues.

This was going to be the first report made after an update.

So naturally there were some server growing pains me, not a DBA just a server pleb, had to resolve.

All par for the course.

Figured out those in a couple days.

Close ticket.

Couple days go by and the ticket is back.

Hmm, possibly a mistake?

Hmm weird thought I closed that, wait, crap, she reopened it.

Oh she just cant export the report.

Probably another server issue.

A fair enough assumption.

Spend probably 20 hours over 3 days looking into it before I ask what she is trying to pull.

She was trying to pull every data point in the server except for customer name, address, etc.

Literally payment history, balance due, closed out accounts, days, times, memos on accounts, etc everything on an account except specific identifiable info she was trying to pull.

That is certainly no small feat.

During all of this the DB and other systems kept going down randomly and we kept having to break from this to look at that.

Outage bigger issue than no new things, obviously.

Much, much bigger it sounds like.

Then we learn what she is trying to export and when we line up when she was attempting to the outages theyre in sync exactly.

She didnt understand why the system wouldn’t let her do this but eventually gave us the criteria she needed and our Jr DBA had the report done pulled straight from SQL in like 25 minutes.

All’s well that ends well in IT. Let’s see what the Reddit comments had to say about this one.

Some were entirely baffled by the story.

But a few gave the benefit of the doubt.

Others jumped at the chance to share their own stories.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer who tried to skip the checkout line but didn’t get their way.

One person didn’t waste the opportunity for jokes.

And another took his chances with sarcasm.

Not all co-workers are user-friendly.