dystop

[REPOST]

I work in a helpdesk hotline for an international company of around 50.000 employees. To understand why I felt such glee when our head of IT called about needing her password reset, I'll have to explain a bit of backstory.

We've been handling the 1st level servicedesk for all sites around the globe, mainly Europe, North America and Singapore for the better part of a decade now. As you can probably imagine, working in a contractor-based helpdesk (meaning we're not part of the actual company but instead are employees of the call center) will involve a lot of sucking up. New tools are introduced for the users to utilise but they're complete shit, borderline useless and lack features the old software had? Suck it up. Process is unclear, nonsensical or just plain dumb? Suck it up, you can give feedback, but we're sure as hell gonna ignore the heck out of it.

So after around 10 years of sucking up and working with what we got, our service department got outsourced to the cheapest competitor available. A real slap in the face against us. No helpdesk is ever perfect (especially since we’re all underpaid unmotivated IT grunts), but we always thrived to meet our targets and get work done. Subsequently, everyone hated the change of IT service providers, except for company treasury. Service quality plummeted, most of our guys lost their jobs and only half a dozen of us still work in our original jobs since the new IT Service is so ludicrously bad, our rampdown has been delayed for close to a year now so at least SOMEONE knows what they're doing and gets shit done in 1st lvl servicedesk.

You can imagine the jaws dropping when the architect for the whole IT restructuring got an award for her work in saving the company money (which they probably lost again due to every OTHER department having significantly more IT related issues that are just not being solved). It was no fancy, well-known award, but it involved red carpet and a gala. For basically ruining IT service.

So this award winning architect of IT-doom calls me this one night, because she's forgotten something basic: changing her password before it had been expired for too long. She is now on an important business trip to oversee the last regions we're servicing being converted to the new service provider. And now she couldn't get any work done, because she couldn't access her laptop.

As I mentioned earlier, the tools and processes we have to use are bonkers. Sometimes you could work around them. But in my case, I was too happy to tell her: "nope, I can not generate a new password for you since you haven't accessed the password self service tool before." Dumbfounded, she replied "What? You can not reset my password, because I have not accessed the password tool previously, which I now can not do because I don't have a valid password to access the tool with?" I smiled to myself as I continued: "Exactly that. Since we've lost our tools to reset passwords manually, the only other alternative is sending an automatically generated email to your manager, who will have to bother resetting the password for you." A realisation struck her then. These managers of hers...are all just one step below the CEO. They're in the executive committee, busy people. And I would need to send them an email, asking them to kindly run after the password reset for her to do her job. All because she ignored her frequent password change prompts. It was glorious. Sure, I still knew a way of resetting the password manually. But I sure as hell wasn't gonna put my ass on the line for that to happen. Wasn't allowed by the process, too. "Isn't there any other person you could send this mail to?", she asked. And I confirmed, sure, I could, to the manager one step above that. Which would mean the CEO himself.

She was not amused.

She refrained from threats, but when customers ask for your name with clenched teeth, it's usually not because they're smiling so hard. In a frantic tone, she declared all of this process to be nonsense (nonsense we had to work with over the last 7 months, so yeah, no shit) and all but ordered me to send her the password manually to her private phone number. To which I calmly replied, miss, as head of IT and processes, of course you know I'm not allowed to do that. In addition to not having the technical means." The rest of the call was fairly straightforward. She'd promise to send me a mail with an exception authorisation so I could reset the password for her in particular. to which I told her if that's what she intends for us to do: set passwords for anyone claiming to be head of IT and almost threatening me. I mean, I know it was her since I knew her voice as our head of IT's and the phone number matched, but still. After a bit more skirmishing she brought up the "YOU'RE REFUSING TO HELP ME" argument to which I countered the only possible thing left for me to do is open a ticket for the 2nd level and have them figure out a way to get her a simple password. She ended the call angrily soon after.

The ticket about getting her a password is still not resolved by the way. Guess we're not the only department with a grudge against her.

Feel free to share your thoughts here!

(full disclosure - I posted this on reddit about 6 years ago, just saw it while I was deleting my reddit posts and thought I would port it over)

So I'm at this grocery store that I've just started going to. They have one of those free rewards card programs which I'd just signed up for the day before.

Checkout cashier is a grumpy woman. She doesn't make eye contact with the customer she's checking out, and she's constantly talking to another coworker. As it gets to my turn, she tells her coworker: "last one!"

So after scanning my items, she asks me for my rewards card (which would give me about $8-12 off for that purchase). I don't have it, so I give her my phone number (which I'd seen other people do). She tells me my phone number isn't in the system.

Me: "Oh, but I definitely signed up for the rewards card before."

Her ("C" for cashier): "When?"

Me: "Uh... 2 or 3 days ago?"

C: "It's not in the system yet."

Me: "Oh. In that case... can I still get the rewards discounts?"

C: "No, I need your rewards card for that."

At this point, the lady behind me offers to let me use her rewards card, so I take it, thank her, and give the card to the cashier.

C: "That's not yours."

Me (getting annoyed): "I know. I have my own, but it's not in the system and I don't have it now. It's a free rewards card. What's wrong with using her card?"

C: "You can't do that."

This was the point where all the cashiers were changing shifts, so her coworkers were leaving and new ones were taking over.

C gives a long, audible sigh and says: "My shift is over. If you don't have a rewards card you have to pay the full price. That'll be $X."

I suddenly have a stroke of brilliance as I remember how painfully slow the registration process was for my rewards card.

Me (smiling now): "You know what? I lied. I don't have a rewards card. But I'd like to sign up for one!"

This supermarket had a weird system for keying in the rewards card number - customers filled out a form on the spot and the cashiers filled in everything on their terminals. It took forever.

I got a form and filled it up. I gave a fake name, email, and phone number. I made my name and email as long as the maximum number of characters, and even gave an optional (fake) address.

I stood there smiling as the cashier (who looked like she was about to blow) typed in everything.

By the time I was done paying, she looked like she was going to murder me regardless of the fact that we were in a large supermarket.

As she hands me my new rewards card, i tell her as I walk away: "Nah, you keep it. All the information I gave you was fake anyway."

I had to rush back to my apartment with my groceries to make my next appointment after that, but man i felt so good for the rest of the day.

Today's news, 2050 edition:

• The Republic of Comcast has demanded an additional $100m in "aid" per country, citing rising business costs. On a separate note, Comcast claims that the recent shelling of Google's Fiber headquarters by their flagship destroyer, the CTWS Cunt, was a "training mishap". The shelling took out a sizeable portion of the building and destroyed some servers and central cables. The extent of the damage is still unknown. Independent observers who have publicly showed interest in assisting with the investigation have so far been unable to communicate with the media as their phone and internet service appear to have been disconnected.

• The Federated Nations of Monsanto has passed legislation in the UN mandating the commercial use of non-GMO crops illegal for "national security" reasons. The company has been criticised for working with governments to engineer "genetic backdoors" into all crops so that when sprayed with a special "golden shower", the crops would die within 24 hours. Originally intended to assist governments in destroying illegal poppy plantations used in the drug trade, the use of such "backdoors" is now prevalent in nearly every commercial GMO crop produced. An executive for Monsanto stated that "If you are not doing anything wrong, you do not have to fear this". Countries that have expressed interest are North Korea, Zimbabwe and Russia.

• The International Delta-GreatLakes-American Federation (IDGAF), the airline consortium created 20 years ago from United Airlines, US Airways, Delta Airlines, Great Lakes and American Airlines, has recently announced plans to restrict access to the consortium's airports to only allow airlines which follow IDGAF's service standards, termed Flying Unburdened (FU). FU standards include: a minimum charge of $10 for access to in-flight entertainment consoles, a ban on free drinks and meals on flights, a limit of $50 compensation for bumped passengers, and stricter upper limits on legroom and complimentary luggage allowance. As IDGAF owns 98% of domestic airports, airlines are expected to comply. Critics had predicted such an outcome when IDGAF began taking ownership of domestic airports 10 years ago, but were unable to petition Congress or overseas governments in person as they had been added to a "no-fly" list.

• The newest member of the UN, Nestle, is proposing a new bill that would declare tap water "undrinkable" unless it passed extremely strict quality standards, failing which it would be banned from being served in restaurants or anywhere in public. When confronted with the allegation that these standards are far too rigorous for any country to enforce and that people would have to resort to drinking bottled water (of which Nestle produces 75% of the world's supply), the Prime Executive of Nestle reiterated that his concern was for the health of humans across the globe. A reporter who asked why the legislation did not apply to bottled water (which is usually just as impure as tap water) was immediately arrested for unknown reasons.

• The People's Republic of Amazonistan today signed an additional order for 1800 drones, to be delivered over the next 2 years. This brings Amazonistan's Air/Drone Force to a total of 121,000. Many have expressed concern that these drones represent a serious militarization effort as they are capable of loitering and launching precision strikes with Hellfire missiles, but Amazonistan maintains that they are only to be used for delivery purposes. When asked about their huge Hellfire missile stockpile, the President of Amazonistan mumbled something about "maybe making it available for 1-hour Prime Now delivery", then walked away quickly. ^((inspired by /u/Alexi_Bosconovich's talk of Amazonistan below)^)

OBLIGATORY GOLD EDIT/ADDITION:

• The Amalgamated Union of Rio Tinto-Newcress announced yesterday that an unspecified "supply issue" has forced them to temporarily halt all shipments of gold, as well as copper and iron ore to Germany, effective immediately. This is expected to have a crippling effect on Germany's manufacturing industry, since the Union controls 89% of the world's iron ore and owns all copper and gold mines globally. In response to journalists' inquiries, a Union spokesman cryptically stated that "[the supply issue] will last as long as it has to". Political analysts say that this move is mean to pressure Germany, one of the last remaining holdouts, to sign the Nature Appreciation Agreement. The Agreement declares strip mines an "integral and essential part of nature", allowing Rio Tinto-Newcress to mine in signatory countries without the need for any permits. The Agreement also gives the Union the right to displace any township for mining purposes without question and classifies environment-related protests as "acts of terror".

2nd GOLD ADDITION (no more pls):

• The Sony-Valve Empire has announced the global release date of the highly anticipated Quarter-Life 3. As with the previous two iterations, Quarter-Life 3 is expected to have a 100% market penetration thanks to the Nebag Act of 2031, which classifies all Sony-Valve software as "adolescent development aids" that parents are required by law to purchase. The old payment plan remains unchanged with a low downpayment of $499.99 and 60 monthly payments of $99.99. Quarter-Life 3 also comes with an improved version of the UltraFish DRM suite. The old UltraFish software provoked brief controversy as it irrevocably erase the entire contents of the user's computer upon discovery of pirated software (including books, music and movies/TV). The new UltraFish builds on this capability and is able to scan all Internet-connected computers in the customer's home for any pirated material, similarly wiping the hard drives of offending systems. Furthermore, UltraFish is now able to access all webcams and microphones within the customer's home, a move that the Chief Gamer at Sony-Valve claimed would "allow[Sony-Valve] to better tailor our in-app purchases to the user's habits and household activity patterns".

EDIT2: Wow ok this blew up a little. I'm not Max Berry nor have I read Jennifer Government (although now I'm interested in reading that). Just had a stroke of inspiration while checking Reddit in bed this morning, my girlfriend's still asleep and there's more blood going to my head than usual ifyouknowwhatimean.

EDIT3: Wow, my first double gold! Alright have another headline story then! But NO MORE GOLD PLS I'M RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS.

I just ran into this problem and I was wondering if anyone knew the lemmy software well enough to answer this. I'm seeing different stats on communities depending on which instance I view it from, and I don't know what the true statistics are.

Using a community I moderate ( /c/[email protected] ) as an example:

If i view the sidebar from its home instance: https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance

It says 91 users / day, 143 users / week, 2.19K subscribers

But if I view it from another instance: https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]

It says 42 users / day, 85 users / week, 45 subscribers.

I'm assuming the user count is based on that specific instance, and subscriber count when viewing from another instance is based on subscribers from that instance only (so 45 subscribers using lemmy.ml accounts). But is the subscriber count from the "home" instance the true aggregation of all subscribers across the fediverse, or subscribers from that instance? And if the latter, is there a way to know the true subscriber count for communities across the fediverse?

So I just ran into this problem and I was wondering if anyone knew the lemmy software well enough to answer this. I'm seeing different stats on communities depending on which instance I view it from, and I don't know what the true statistics are.

Using a community I moderate ( /c/[email protected] ) as an example:

If i view the sidebar from this link: https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance

It says 91 users / day, 143 users / week, 2.19K subscribers

But if I view it from this link: https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]

It says 42 users / day, 85 users / week, 45 subscribers.

I'm assuming the user count is based on that specific instance, and subscriber count when viewing from another instance is based on subscribers from that instance only (so 45 subscribers using lemmy.ml accounts). But is the subscriber count from the "home" instance the true aggregation of all subscribers across the fediverse, or subscribers from that instance?

Flickr album here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jayfa_mocs/52800954914/