My supervisor got a nasty letter from one of the SF we support. Apparently she called in four times and nobody created a helpdesk ticket for her. We are very good about putting in tickets for everything, no matter how small or unimportant.

But...

If you're going to put the names of people in the letter that didn't help you make sure not to use names of helldesk members that don't work here anymore.

This little saga started about six weeks ago, when I began having problems with our corporate e-mail going down periodically due to too many consecutive SMTP connections. Some of you may remember my rant back then about dealing with the incompetent techs at 1and1 Internet. I finally made the decision to re-host all of our websites. Due to a few factors which I won't go into at the moment, it took me all of April to accomplish this.

Now, in the course of making the necessary arrangements, it was brought to my attention that our main e-commerce site was for all intents and purposes, broken. The shopping cart they were using was Miva Merchant, the license for which was owned by the hosting provider. This made making changes to the site problematic at best. I was told that in order to edit a single product, our guys had to click through several menu screens to get to where they wanted to be, and that it would drop them straight into the source code for editing. Hence, if somebody mistyped something, the page would break. One of them tried to go to the site as a normal user to sign up for an account and complete a sale, and he couldn't do it. One month there were 3 sales out of 3000 hits to the site. It was that bad.

So, all four of us went to one of the owners with all of this information. I got permission to get a quote to fix the site, convert the shopping cart to XCart (which we would own the license to), and move the site to a new host. I got the quote, which was a couple thousand dollars, got the quote approved, and a check for half the amount was cut to the company, with the balance due prior to the site going live.

The company controller was not happy with that last part, and told me she wouldn't pay the balance until she saw the site up and running live. To achieve this, I gave the the owner of the company that was doing the conversion, who just so happened to grow up in the same neighborhood I did, my personal word that he would receive the balance after the site went live. He got the work done, exactly on schedule, and the site went live yesterday afternoon.

So I show up for work today, and I'm greeted with an e-mail from the *other* company owner, who was apparently completely unaware that any of this was going on, and is now pissed that he was left out of the loop. He doesn't like the new site design, and the fact that the old site was all but unusable to potential customers seems to be irrelevant.

So, I still have not received a check for the balance that's due to the company that did their job, and did everything they were contracted to do. At this point I am so pissed off that I'm ready to take the site completely down, and let $Company fix it on their own.

I take an e-commerce site that is broken, full of broken pages and images, hard to maintain from an admin point of view, and damn near impossible to use from a user point of view, and completely re-vamp it into an easy to use and administer site for a little over two thousand dollars, WITH APPROVAL FROM UPPER MANAGEMENT, and then I get bitched at for doing my fucking job?

Fuck this. I'm going to sell all of my computers and become a farmer.

It looked like we found a good tech: the dude did well at the interview, answered all questions right and did a relatively good job with the hands-on portion so I decided to give him a chance and take him on as a tech.

The first call on which the new guy was sent involved setting up a DSL connection with a router and a printer. The call took close to two and a half hours at the end of which the guy determined that the PC needed major repairs and talked the customer into letting him take it to the store. After he dropped it off we tested the PC and determined that there were no issues. I called the customer to let her know that the PC was fine and to schedule a call to deliver it and set up at no charge. She came in the store instead and told me that she was unhappy because the technician did not appear to know what he was doing, he messed around for a while and spent close to thirty minutes messing with the printer drivers without making sure that the printer was actually plugged in...

I sent a different tech to finish the job and the customer was happy.

The new guy's second call was supposed to be simple: A few computers in a small office had stopped printing to a networked LaserJet printer. This call took him three hours during which he tried to get the printer working as well as resolve a conflict: on one PC a USB flash drive was given the same drive letter as a mapped network drive causing the customer's software to work. Instead of changing the drive letter for the USB device the guy changed the mapped drive letter causing the software not to work... He got the settings back to normal but did not acomplish anything with the printer.

After he left I called his cell to get info and when I asked what the printer's IP was he said that the address was 127.0.0.1

I had to go to the customer's office the next morning to set up the printer (the IP address was 10.2.1.60), which took less than 5 minutes and set the USB drive letter which took another 5 minutes. I then spent 15 minutes explaining to the customer that they were not getting charged for the previous day's time...

So now we're back to looking for techs...

Call centers get new agents all the time. just for the most part they don't get up the supervisors nose until AFTER they have had any experience on the contract.

over the weekend we picked up a new division, which in and of itself is nothing new or exciting. EXCEPT when all information that one would normally expect ( transfer codes, hour of operation, ETC) is Missing!

we got blindsided and I spent several hours at work cobling togther what I could from variouse sources. Nothing official BUT it was something! I happened to have slipped in a nice picture in the background (relevant to the geographical area), while learning some CSS.

I get in today to find out someone had an issue with the picture and that it was "NIce that the sups have time to put a picture on the page, but not enough to add any needed info". Lucky for this person I'm overnights else they would be but a red stain on the carpet. One of the day time sups ( who'd witnessed me valiently slapping SOMETHING together) got offended for me. It came down from our TL and daytime Sup basically whent up one side and down the other stating that we DIDN'T have any info and we ARE STILL WAITING for it and the newb can shove it were the sun don't shine. BUt seeing as how this was a heads up, and we can see the TL's point( bring the issue to us directly rather then hearing it from a higher up)we removed my couple lines of code. now the page only displays the little info we DO have.. and a hell of a lotta TBA.

Hey, come on in, guys! Grab a bowl or a cone, ice cream and cake for everyone! Just be quiet for the story, mmmkay. There were too many noises coming from Burkiss last time, pun intended.

Well, now that you’ve had a glimpse at my co-worker Jack ( http://www.techcomedy.com/single/single.php?content_number=67179 ), let’s talk about our time together. As I said, Jack and I were hired at the same time and went through the same training session. Training at CableISP involved a ten-person class crammed into a too-small room, with our instructor, Mr. Mack. It was, without a doubt, the best part of working at CableISP. So yeah, seven weeks crammed in with Jack.

Now, just after getting his new job, Jack had decided to get a new cell phone. And, since he was a rather outgoing sort, he felt the need to constantly discuss the cell phone, which one he should get, which carrier he should use, which features he would want, what rate he should pay for those features, where he could get the phone, etc. Bear in mind that for weeks on end, he would speak of nothing but his cell phone, and this had nothing to do with learning how to support cable modems.

”So, like, I was thinking of going with the Sony 700, cuz it’s small and it looks cool and I can do IMs. It has a camera. Do you think I should use a camera? It might be neat, cuz then I don’t have to buy a camera too. I know someone in Asia and the camera phones are really popular over there. I went to the Cingular store, and they said I could get it for $240 if I sign a one-year contract. I dunno, I mean, what if the service sucks? I don’t want to be stuck with a phone for a year if it’s not what I want. But I also don’t want to spend $500 on a phone. And if I text…

Then next week, it’d be ”Yeah, I got this phone on eBay. It was a good deal, I got it for like, $100, and it looks brand new. The screen could be a little bigger, I think, bit it was a good deal. I’m trying to figure out how to use the IM feature. Watch this, I can change the ringtone. See, I can play all sorts of different songs. And if I get a cable I can make my own. Or I can buy them from the company, they’re like $3, and they didn’t mind if I used an eBay phone, they said…”

Which eventually led to “Yeah, now I can’t use my phone. They had a problem with my account, whole thing got botched up. They were charging me the wrong rate, and I was paying way too much, so they said that they’d just close the whole thing and make a new account, but my phone isn’t active yet. So if I get a call, I won’t know. And I don’t know if I’ll get my voice mail. Has this ever happened to you? What did you do about it? I’m thinking of just canceling, but I got the phone on eBay and I can’t get a refund…”

Then the next week. “Well, I got my phone back up and working, and I finally figured out how to do the IMs. See, it’s not supposed to be compatible with AIM, but if you hold this key, and put in a zero, somehow it works. See, I’m sending one right now. Look at my phone, isn’t it all pretty and shiny?”

As I said last time, Jack was a good guy, but this went on for 6 weeks. Six weeks in a small room with a guy who won’t talk about anything but his cell phone is enough to make anyone mental. So, one day, things got out of hand…

The seats in the class were arrainged in a giant “U” shape, with a table in the center. I sat at one end of the “U” and a guy named “Pat” sat at the other. Jack sat next to Pat. Now, you should know that Pat and I have one thing in common—a very innocent demeanor and very young appearances. For better or worse, we look like boy scouts. No one ever suspects us of anything. Well, while Jack is busy talking, Pat takes his phone. I don’t mean he slipped it into his pocket silently—the guy picked it up and had a big “WOW!” look on his face. Pat proceeded to show his prize to the others in the room, who buckled over laughing that Jack hadn’t even noticed yet. To keep the ruse going, Pat passed it to the person next to him, who did the same, who did the same, until it would up being given to me. Now, I’m not going to do anything truly mean, but the opportunity here was just too big to let slide.

I stuck the phone in my pocket and continued to type.

Jack finally realized his phone was missing. He accosted one of the shadier individuals in the classroom. “Hey, you took my phone!”

Of course, Jack was wrong. He wasn’t talking to the thief, merely an accomplice. Jack then proceeded to accuse and badger seven other co-workers, all of whom had Chesire Cat grins. Each one honestly said “I didn’t take your phone, and I don’t have it!” Jack goes nuts, accusing them of lying.

And yet, he never could bring himself to corner Pat or myself. Being so quiet, we were just below his scrutiny. Jack tears the room apart looking for the phone, all the while mumbling that he KNOWS the crew took it.

Finally, I got up, tapped Jack on the shoulder, and told him he had the phone the whole time… In a classic parlor trick, it had somehow gotten stuck in his ear. *EG*