As I’m in the process of slowing shutting down other sites I’ve worked on (due to time constraints), I’m reposting them here. Here’s an article from “Behind The Frontline” which was going to be a cross between I Work With Fools, Worse Than Failure and Dilbert.
Category: More Information, Please!. Author: Anonymous
It’s a nice relaxing Thursday at mission control when a tech support ticket is raised on the helpdesk. It looks like correspondence between two people (“Company XYZ: It looks like account 123 isn’t working, but 124 is”), but with no indication as to why and how it concerns us. I then request further information about what the problem is and shufty off to play Roller Coaster Tycoon for a bit.
An hour or two later and a new ticket is opened with exactly the same details (and by the same user). Update ticket again asking for a couple of bits of information “What is the problem? What is meant to happen? What software are you using? Are you getting any error messages?” – basically, something for me to start working from – at the moment, I’ve got no idea what the problem is, let alone how I could offer assistance.
I continue losing a bit of money on RCT3.
Check back on the helpdesk and more correspondence between the customer and this unknown third party – it looks like they are having a problem getting a piece of software working, but what software it is, I don’t have a clue. The third party themselves say things appear to be working.
I close the ticket with a note “Unable to assist – I can’t offer support for third party applications and I haven’t got sufficient information from yourselves to be able to diagnose problem”.
Grab a drink.
They’ve responded to the closed ticket. First of all with some more strange third party correspondence and then asking what information I need (I cut and paste “What is the problem? What is meant to happen? What software are you using? Are you getting any error messages?”).
I wait a bit more – it’s now 11pm at night.
They close the ticket themselves – “Oh, I see the problem: I’ve missed some files”.
11 hours later, the problem is resolved and I’ve still got no idea what the problem was! I need an alcoholic drink!
