Tales from Tech Support

These stories are originally posted over the past decade on Reddits TalesfromTechSupport so I am copying over to Lemmy to help bring some life into this /c/

Sigh, I had one of those Mondays. As per the rules all names are replaced to protect the identity of the stupid and ill informed.

Some auzzie slang/humour may come off as offensive, I apologise, its just how we roll in the land down under

Back story, I work for a fixed wireless ISP. I deal anywhere between integration firms and the onsite IT bloke. This particular incident took place at the HQ of a multi site medical center group

Get a call at 6:30AM

Me: G'day slazer speaking.
Customer IT guy (Lets call him Steve): Hi mate, its Steve from Medical Group our head office is offline at the moment. We had a really bad storm go though last night, it may just be power but can you guys be on stand by just in case?
Me: nyaaa, all right. I'll do my usual morning stuff and get into the office asap. Can you check out HQ and let me know?
Steve: no worries mate.

2 min later

imessage from the boss: slazer, the HQ of Medical Group is down. whats going on.
imessage to the boss: Just got off the phone with their IT bloke and he is going in to checking power. I'll get to the office early and prep our spare radios.

no reply from the boss.
[insert usual morning stuff of shower, shave, and shi....]
While driving to the office I get another call from Steve

Me: G'day Steve, how is it looking on your end?
Steve: Well, we have lost a UPS and a switch to last nights storm, you may of lost your radio though, there is no up-link light on your Cisco NTU.
Me: bugger, I guess you have tried power cycling it?
Steve: Yea, the light is on the power injector but no light on the NTU. Our sparkie (aussie slang for an electrician) is coming in to check everything else is OK, I'll get him to check your cable too.
Me: Cheers mate, I'll get a spare radio configured and head straight up to you.

3 accidents on the motorway D: a normal 45 min trip takes 2 hours but I get there eventually.

CIT: You took your time mate.
Me: Traffics a female dog.
CIT: Fair call, the sparkie had a look at the run from the server room to the radio on the roof, he said everything is fine. where do you want to start?
Me: Well lets make sure the POE injector is OK first.

We head to the server room and I notice there is no light on the POE injector. I do the usual troubleshooting and the light on the POE will only stay on while the cable to the radio is not plugged in. I check the injector by plugging in the replacement radio, lights stays on and the radio turns on and starts squawking while it searches for a base station to connect to. The port on the NTU also comes on ruling out the POE and NTU as the cause of the fault.

Me: Well the problem is not down here. Lets go for a sticky beak on the roof.
just as i finish saying the sentence, the sparkie appears out of nowhere.
Sparkie: Everything is fine on the roof, I have checked the cable and the radio is powered up
Me: ......... its not that I don't believe you, its just that..... no bugger it, I don't believe you.
Sparkie: hmmf

the sparkie walks off.

Steve: Little rude there mate? Me: Only because he lied.

Stevelooks confused

Me: By how the light was behaving on the injector, there is no way everything is fine.
Steve: Fair enough mate, let me know what you find.

He goes back to checking the servers and I head up to the roof alone. Once I get onto the roof I notice there is no light on the bottom of the radio...

I remove the waterproof bung and saw the rj45 head had been...... I don't have a word that will get passed the profanity filter for how the head looked.

Now, I have seen RJ45 heads shorted before from either over voltage (doing 54v to a 24v device) or water getting into the bung but nothing this bad.

It takes me a moment to collect myself and I begin repairing the cable. YAY for service loops!!! I install the replacement radio and get off the roof to make sure the customer is back online.

Warning: PUT YOUR DRINKS DOWN BEFORE OPENING THE PICTURE

I find the Steve in his "office" (read cubby hole)

Steve: back online are we? Good, What was the problem.
Me: May wana get the sparkie in for this.

Stevelooks confused, but pages him to his "office".

Sparkie: Whats up?
Me: When you said you checked the cable, what did you do?
Sparkie: I put a RJ45 tester on both ends and it tested OK.
Me: Again, I do not believe you. Tell me, how did you "test" this?

I gave both Steve and the sparkie a moment to collect their jaws from the table.

Steve: You can go slazer, thanks for getting the connection working. May I keep that head?
Me: Sure mate, I have a pic, that is all we require.

I am not sure if I will find out what happens with that sparkie, but I doubt I want to. On the bright side, because I had to travel before 7AM the company paid for my breakfast :D

To those of you who saw the pic before my warning of putting your drinks down, I am sorry. For those of you who blandly ignored it.... well, I am still sorry, but you were warned.

Update Time

So it turns out the sparkie vocabulary is smaller than both myself and Steve thought most sparkies have. When he was told to check the cable going to the radio on the roof he thought they were talking about the Wifi Access Point on the 3th floor.

His reasoning: Because ground, 1st and 2nd have floors above them they have ceilings. 3rd floor is the top floor so it is not a ceiling, it is a roof...... I'll let that logic sink in for the rest of you too.