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~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
Worked IT .
Everything is working
"Why do we even pay you guys ?"
Something is broken
"Why do we even pay you guys?"
Im a locksmith.
Customer: Do you make duplicates? Me: Yes C: How much? M: Depends on the type of key C: The normal one M: -_-
Or, after opening a customers door who was locked out:
C: Why so expensive tho? It only took you five minutes! M: -_- (Thats exactly why you dumb fuck, and I told you the price beforehand)
I also hate when people tries to haggle the price because I know for a fact that Im the cheapest locksmith in the area.
Meanwhile youβve spent 30-60 minutes driving for their problem. I feel ya.
Who are you and how did you get in here?
Im a locksmith and... Im a locksmith.
never gets old.
That reminds me of the joke where a factory has a big machine break down. They call in a specialist to fix it.
The specialist looks at the machine for a moment, hits it with a small hammer and it starts working instantly.
But on being told that the repair cost is $500, the factory owner is outraged and asks how that can possibly be justified for less than a minute's work.
"Well, it's $5 for use of the hammer, $495 for knowing exactly where to hit the machine."
Job: Welder
Customer: "Hey I need a welder to fix the railing at my business."
Me: "OK, I can start work after you close for the day."
Customer: "Oh no, I'm not staying late. I need you to fix it during business hours."
Me: "OK then, it's dangerous work so I'll need to rope off the area and erect screens to protect the general population from weld flash and grinder sparks."
Customer: "Oh no, this walkway needs to stay open for customers during business hours."
Me: "Again, this is dangerous work. Somebody is going to get hurt if they're permitted to walk through the work area."
Customer: "I don't know why you're being so difficult, just zap zap and you're done."
Me: "No, it's going to take a lot of work. The railing is rusted through so entire sections need to be replaced. It also needs to be level, up to code, cleaned for safety reasons, support the weight of an average adult human, and painted to prevent corrosion. We're talking multiple days of work and it's not cheap."
Customer: "Repairs are not in the budget, but I can spread the word and tell all my friends about you. I have almost two hundred followers on Facebook."
Me: (silently gets up and walks away)
Customer: "Look at that, another lazy Millennial who doesn't want to work. Typical. No wonder this nation is going down the crapper."
Classic example of what would happen if we didn't have standards and regulations.
My executive saying "Revenue is up 30% YoY! [...] Due to budget cuts we're limited to a 4% raise+CoL adjustment this year."
Me: Software developer. Other person: Sales guy.
Sales guy: Have you finally fixed the XYZ bug?
Me: What XYZ bug? Never heard of this before.
Sales guy: The bug that impacted our project A, B, and C! It is there for years!
Me: No, I have not fixed it. Because I just heard about this issue now. Nobody told me about an XYZ bug, or problems with projects A, B, and C.
Sales guy: What? Why didn't you know about such a bug? This cannot be possible! I'll talk to the boss about your incompetence!
Me: Because none of your team found it necessary to inform me? Maybe we should talk to the boss about this.
Open a goddamn ticket.
I will go and open a ticket and I will put two words in it, and require you to contact me for ~~more~~ any information, and then I won't answer the phone for 6 weeks. Oh and don't bother leaving a voicemail message or sending me an email, because I never check them. However despite my complete unresponsiveness, I am nonetheless going to insist that it's marked as high priority even though I don't understand what high priority means - Every Employee Ever
Patron using the computer: "Your Google is broken! No matter what I search, it just shows me books!"
Me: "...you're typing in the library's catalog. This isn't Google."
Can you change the report for this one customer who has a nonstandard completely fucking stupid set up that none of your collection points account for and goes against the entire point of this report?
Well, maybe not those exact words. It's more like:
- rep: customers XYZ doesn't like what they see on the report
- me: well tell them to clean up their shit and stop leaving orphaned systems in their environment
- rep: well can't you just exclude the orphaned ones
- me: the point of the report is to help you clean up your environment. If they did that it would show improvement week over week until it got to the levels they want to see.
- rep: they don't want to do that, they just want them excluded from the report
- me: no
"Can we integrate AI into this app?"
"Can you do a browser version of this high-end VR training application?" somehow makes a browser version "Why isn't this running on my iPhone 3GS?!"
Job: cashier. Not my current job, but definitely the one that racked up the most irritating quotes.
Customer: "Now, don't you try to double scan my items. I'm watching you."
I heard this one constantly when I was a cashier at a grocery store. At first I assumed that they were kidding. After all, it's such a stupid accusation to make. It was only after about 100 elderly people had said it while staring daggers at me that I realized they weren't kidding.
I assume there must have been a news report in the 1960s about store clerks charging you twice for an item and then taking the extra cash, and a certain kind of person had been paranoid about it ever since. Except this wasn't in the 1960s, it was the 2010s, and such a scam couldn't even work anymore. The cash register isn't just a lockbox like it was in the 60s, it's a computer and it knows exactly how much money should be in it. And if it has less than that in it when your shift ends, you're screwed.
Plus, you're paying with a credit card, Gertrude, how am I supposed to steal your shit when you're paying with a credit card?
I think the thing that made it so irritating was the fact that they are willing to whip out this assertive, domineering attitude at you based on information that hasn't been true for about forty freaking years. They have a mistrust of other people because they don't know how the world works anymore, yet they think they've outsmarted you.
From many years ago, in a previous career.
Job: IT
Issue: hardware of some kind is broken
Customer, incredulous: "...but it wasn't broken yesterday!"
Yeah, no shit. That's how things break. They're fine, then become broken. Why is this even being discussed?
I work retail. People walk up to me like I'm a robot.
"Duck tape??" They just... Bark at me. I have gotten to the point that I refuse to tell them where something is until they treat me like a human being and ask a very simple question, "where's duck tape?"
I'm currently a medical student in my clinical rotations....
Me: "So it looks like we're due for our (blank) month/year vaccinations. Have those been done already or do we need them today?"
Parent: "Oh, we're not vaccinating."
Me: screaming internally
When someone doesn't understand a process and asks "can't you just do XYZ?" Usually management. "Just" is actually a 2 week project and tons of hours and trouble shooting
"X is down/broke." No, Kelly, the internet isn't "down." You typed the URL wrong in your browser.
People will state it like the entire company has lost internet connectivity, or an entire department cannot access files or run a certain program, when actually, only a single user is having a problem.
Also people not knowing the difference between log out, restart, and shutdown. Even after explaining it to them.
It's frustrating when you know there's a huge gap between your comprehension and theirs, but they think you're the idiot.
As a software dev.
Client: we need feature by end of quarter.
Me: cool, what do you expect it to do, do you have any requirements?
Client: ...
Job: Cook
Person: Manager
"No one wants to work anymore"
No one ever wanted to work motherfucker. That's why we're fucking paid to be here. If you weren't paying us we wouldn't fucking be here. But you pay us the bare fucking minimum and expect us to work like we're paid immense luxury wages.
Take a sandy brick and insert it as a suppository.
At my last job as a project manager, I had a director that I worked with that I absolutely despised. On a regular basis we would have this (abridged) interaction:
Director: I don't understand what this report is trying to say. Take out abc and include xyz. Me: Ok. includes changes in meeting notes next meeting Director: What is this? Why does the report look like this? I don't even understand why you would make it look like this. Change xyz and include abc. Me: But... Director: No buts, this is my team's project. Me: ...Ok. includes changes in meeting notes next meeting Director: What is going on with this? I don't understand what's going on. Why does this report change every time I see it? Me: ... Bruh.
This happened so many times that eventually I had to start including my manager in meetings with him, because this dude was insufferable and did not want to accept it when his ideas and changes were shit. He'd always deny he requested changes (even though I documented them in the meeting notes), and everything was everyone's fault except his. Luckily another director that I got along with really well requested me to work on their projects and I got transferred.
"Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later" ---> code that is hackish and will never be replaced.
"We need you to do this one time because of someBullshit" ---> congratulations, your team had to do this thing outside of your specialty, even though there exists a team dedicated to it, and now we're just going to make you do it over and over again (despite, again, a whole team dedicated to that existing).
Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later
I'm always blown away whenever someone says that they like some language or framework because it's "great for prototyping."
Like, what magical fairyland software company do you work at where your prototypes are not immediately put into production as soon as they kind of start to work?
Back from my IS analyst/reporting days...
Sends email asking for report. "Terminations from last year". I run it and send. The next day they reply...
Them: "are these from last calendar year or last fiscal year?"
Me: "Calendar"
Them: "I needed the last fiscal year"
Me THEN WHY DIDNT YOU FUCKING SAY LAST FISCAL YEAR!?!?!
"I come to work to get stuff done!"
Yes mate, but you're not getting paid enough to hurt yourself cutting corners.
I hear this all the fucking time from people who want to rush ahead and show off how productive they can be for a boss who has no idea they exist. Drives me mad.
Job: Software Dev
Internal stakeholder or C-Suite: presents nebulous idea for workflow/product/feature with no actual end goal
βWe have a CRITICAL need for this product. It will REVOLUTIONIZE everything we do here. The stakes could not be higher. THIS MUST BE COMPLETED ASAPβ
My boss: Okay. We will move heaven and Earth to get this done for you.
Me: Works 60 hours a week for two months to ensure the new product is successful
Also me: checking usage statistics six months laterβ¦last used by me during go live testing
I hate my life.
I was working at a tool checkout in my shop for a while, and the sheer amount of ignorance and repetition blew me away.
People would come in, see signs stating things like "Don't throw your hazardous waste in this trash can!", and people would straight up ignore it. Things got so bad that we had to stop offering a trash can in our part of the shop.
A lot of people would also just repeat the same statements, day after day, week after week. For example, we have iPads that contain maintenance manuals. We have to update those manuals every week, on the same day. Without fail, the same people always forget which day Update Day is, and have to ask.
The worst ones happen when people come to turn in their gear before end of shift. Most people are fine, but every toolbox has to be thoroughly inspected before being scanned back in. Often, somebody misplaced a tool, left garbage in the box somewhere, or there's some other undocumented discrepancy.
Most people are cool about it, and willing to make things right. But, some people act like you've purposely screwed them over, or react with total apathy and disrespect. I don't make the rules, man, I'm just trying to do my job.
I do tech support on the phone.
When I can't take remote control, the person on the other side is not following instructions, and they just keep repeating "no, not working!" while trying multiple things one after another, that I can't see.
Like, I can understand not being good with technology, I'll be patient. But if I tell them to try loading the site in a private/incognito window and they're telling me "but I tried in Firefox and it's not working", it's not what I'm asking them to do. And if they're like "wait, I'll try again in Chrome" then repeat "nope, not working!", it's still not what I'm asking them to try!
Job: IT Support
New Outlook exists
Customer: "I hate change, can't you just put it back to how it was"
No, I can't. You can use Classic Outlook, but that won't have the features you want, and it's going out the door so you have to change. No, I can't program the Ribbon to look like it used to, that's just what Billy Microsoft decided.
Maybe a niche issue, but "that doesn't scale!" In the context of software development.
We're writing software for usually very well defined user groups, but so many of the architects and seniors want to build a second Netflix, which costs 4 times as much as the simple solution and in the end usually isn't even better, because those morons have no idea how to do that.
Currently, I'm in a project where I fought tooth and nail to avoid having a micro service architecture for a batch job that inserts less than a million entries per day.
When I was first starting as a server at this one restaurant, I swear every other phrase out of my coworkers' mouths when they saw me during the entire first 2 weeks was, "you having fun yet?". And everytime, I'd give a half-assed smirk and say "oh you know it". So dumb. That phrase still irritates the shit out of me to this day.
Me: Linux Sysadmin
Co-workers: 2 Linux sysadmins with 15+ years of experience.
They pronounce URL as Earl.
Job: frontend developer
PO: customers are receiving a lot of errors! I need you to investigate this ASAP!! We are losing business
The error: "the backend application did not respond"
Definitely seems like a problem with the page mr PO, thank you for calling me on my day off.
"We're in code freeze, so no more changes are to be committed until release! Also, the management needs this change to be fast-tracked to be included with the release, so let's make it happen, people!"
When I join into a call with one if our software vendor support teams and they waste 45 of my minutes cause they dont know wtf is going on in our SaaS environment they control. Like get it the fuck together or let me host it.