This company uses BlackBerries for remote e-mail and also allows remote e-mail access via the Web, reports a pilot fish working there. User call to help desk: Does my new BlackBerry have Internet access? Help desk tech: Yes, it does. User: Then can you set up a bookmark for the Web-mail site on my BlackBerry? Sighs fish, "The tech asked if she was having problems receiving mail on the BlackBerry. After a pause, the user responded, 'Oh, I guess that was a dumb request' and hung up."
Friendship
Panicked manager at a small company calls his friend, the boss at an independent tech-support outfit just down the street. My PC won't boot, and I need a tech on-site immediately! he wails. How about troubleshooting it over the phone first? tech boss suggests, since an emergency support call will cost at least $300. But the manager insists, so his friend sends pilot fish. "I took one look at his screen, saw the 'invalid boot disk' error, ejected a floppy, pressed the space bar and watched Windows come to life," says fish. "Then I handed the guy my time sheet to sign. I wonder if he got hit with the full $325 bill, or if my boss gave him a special price."
Who Am I Again?
Engineering manager calls pilot fish: Her underling is out of the office, and she needs a file on his PC. "He had given her his password, and she was logged on as him and found the file, but she couldn't open Outlook to e-mail it to herself," says fish. "I asked if she had a thumb drive she could plug into his PC to copy the file. She replied, 'I'm on my laptop logged in as him. He told me where the file would be, and there it was.' She had logged onto her laptop as him and gone into their shared network drive. She thought she needed to be logged on as him to open the file."
What IT Is For
User calls pilot fish complaining that he can't connect his USB flash drive because he doesn't have administrator privileges, and can he please come take care of it for him. "I head down to his desk and mount the drive," says fish. "Then, per our company's guidelines, I open it up to scan it for malware. Holy cow! I think, looking at the names of the only three files on the drive. It takes a lot of gall to ask tech support to install your jump drive just so you can watch porno movies at work!"
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