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Tech support should be able to fix simple issues without much trouble, but if they don’t know what they are doing, it can cost a lot of money to bring in outside support.

What would you do if you needed a new end put on your network cable, but your college’s tech support didn’t know how to do it?

That was what happened to the guy in this story, so he was disappointed to hear that they had to pay hundreds of dollars to bring an outside contractor in to complete the simple task.

Wow, what a waste of money for such a simple job. Read through the full story below and see what you think.

…and people wonder why we are losing money.

Background: I’m a web programmer for a local community college.

People love to assume that if you work in tech, you know everything about technology.

Therefore, I must know everything about computers; according to the majority of the staff. (I never understood this logic. “You are a cook, you must know everything about farming.”)

This story, however, is about a female tech support that works near the cubicles next to mine. We’ll call her Mary.

Apparently, she isn’t very good at her job.

Mary has been in the same position for quite awhile now, nearly 7 years, and still surprises me how little she knows about technology/computers.

Story: When we finally got IP phones installed, I had an issue. The way our offices are setup, each cubicle has 1 line to connect to our network. Therefore the line had to go into the phone, and another ethernet cable to my docking station.

This should be pretty simple, right?

The problem I had was the clip on the cat5 was broken and the cable would come out if I so much as answered the phone. Not a big problem, just use crimping tool to put on a new end.

In comes Mary with her solution:

Me: hey Mary, I need a new clip for the ethernet cable here.

It really isn’t that complicated.

Mary: oh, I don’t think I can fix that.

Me: ..um you work in tech support. Don’t you have a crimping tool somewhere? or a network testing kit? (maybe that’s not what it’s called)

She isn’t even going to try.

Mary: I don’t think so. I’ll have to call Contract Guy and put in a work order.

Me: You do realize that they charge us for every visit, right?

At least it was a simple call.

At this point, she ignores my pleas, and Contract Guy comes out to fix the issue, which takes about 5 minutes while I’m at lunch.

I later find out that she does have a crimping kit in a storage closest behind her desk.

Good for him. Bad for the college.

Contract Guy made a couple of hundred dollars for a simple task.

Maybe this guy should get into the contracted tech support field; clearly they can make a lot of money off of idiots like this.

Check out what the commenters had to say about this story below.

Not everyone learns how to put on cable ends.

Putting in a new cable would have been cheaper.

Here is someone who knows how it is done.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employer who has an unexpectedly hard time retrieving a company vehicle from a fired employee.

This would have been a fine option.

Putting on cable ends isn’t complicated, but it isn’t easy either.

There were many ways that this could have been done for less money. The amount of waste that exists in big institutions like this is mind-blowing.

At least he got his computer working properly again.