Weird and Cringe things you've seen while working in IT - Since everyone is too lazy to make such a thread where IT bros can vent

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Small story from a place I don't work at anymore.
An admin made a group policy that would set up everyone's time to the same timezone, every day. I was a contractor and my timezone was a bit different than most of the employees they have and I prefer to use my local time so it got annoying fast. I opened a support ticket hoping to get an exemption from this policy because how hard can it be? I mentioned that changing the settings manually doesn't do anything so it's not a solution.
After two weeks of silence some pajeet replied and advised me to use some sort of a command to set the time. Which wouldn't work because this is no different from setting the time in the Windows settings, it's just an another method of doing the same thing. I pondered for a while if I should even reply because the last thing I want is some incompetent jeet messing with my account before realizing that I am a computer programmer and the very reason I am being paid so handsomely is because I can bend the machine to my will. So I wrote a simple script that changed the timezone (not just the time as the pajeet suggested), used some weird trick to avoid opening the cmd window and then used the Task Scheduler to run the script in the morning when I log in. It served me well for about 2 years so I consider that to be a victory.
 
Lets see...

Once, I had to go to USA for an extended period of time, for a big IT company, and everyone there who knew I was a foreigner, always gave me a toothpaste commercial smile and asked me about the weather in my country. Every single fucking day, without fail, for a couple of months. What the fuck is wrong with you people?! God damn demented mutts.

Once, I went to France, and I had to sit with the other engineers and the desk and peripherals were caked in dirt and filth. Then, after work hours, literal who people from random departments who I didn't speak to before took us to bars. It was such a surreal experience and more fuel for my burning hatred of the french.


Indians ...
There's so much and so frequent, I don't even know where to start.
I guess the latest one was a moment where I had to call some faggot, to explain shit to him and in the background, I could hear chickent, elephants and some sort of ceremony, where other faggot indians were ringing a bell and singing something. I would've preferred hammering nails in my brain instead of that whole experience.
 
"We have heard engineer concerns that you're all on ten different projects at a time. We've come up with a solution for this. All of your projects are now under one master project, so you're on one project now"

That's some *classic* hateful management nastiness.
 
AnOminous said:
Along the same line, I hate computer problems that recur, but rarely enough you somehow manage to fix them, but know the next time it happens, you'll still have no clue how you fixed it and have to figure it out again. This is especially when you have to muddle around twiddling multiple obscure things you don't understand until it just starts working so you stop.

And it doesn't happen often enough you can flowchart it or figure out exactly what's wrong.
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On the opposite end of that, sometimes I get calls that are resolved when I connect in. Or if a customer tries restarting the device multiple times, it magically works when I try it. Computers are weird sometimes.
 
The Last Stand said:
On the opposite end of that, sometimes I get calls that are resolved when I connect in. Or if a customer tries restarting the device multiple times, it magically works when I try it. Computers are weird sometimes.
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Or there's the dreaded dancing frog problem. It only happens when *you*, and you alone are looking at it. It stops briefly when someone else is looking at the screen.
 
Gleam said:
No, can't take it apart for that. It's one of those laptops where shit is soldered. *sigh*
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Realistically you can just douse it in contact cleaner then airblast it

Contact cleaner COULD get under something and take a long time to dry I guess, but if you put a fan over it or on an air purifier it'll be gone fast. Other than that it dries out almost instantly

Then use a brush or rag in distilled water to clean the whole thing properly. Distilled water doesn't have any impurities. Water itself is not conductive.

Note do check if "distilled" is the proper term for that type of water, I'm not American so I might be lost in translation
 
"Erm... I have internet issues."

"Oh, just you or the do you know other colleagues who might have the same ma'am?"

"No, everyone has them."

Look at her pc, its been on straight for two weeks.
Tell her to reboot, the internet issue for her and her "colleagues" was solved.

God I fucking hate supporting law firms
 
Rungle said:
Look at her pc, its been on straight for two weeks.
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I never understood the whole "don't ever turn off your computers when you clock out" unwritten rule that office jobs have. I'm like the only one that turns it off and I've never had any of the issues everyone else does.
 
I just found out this morning that one of the branch offices for my nightmare client has emails going back 5 years in the office admin's inbox. This has resulted in them being unable to receive timesheets for this week's payroll run and they are scrambling to archive things to free up space.

I can't wait for the day when they are forced to implement an email retention policy.
 
Celebrate Nite said:
I never understood the whole "don't ever turn off your computers when you clock out" unwritten rule that office jobs have. I'm like the only one that turns it off and I've never had any of the issues everyone else does.
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Someone is probably using them to mine buttcoins.
 
Samuel Fuller said:
I just found out this morning that one of the branch offices for my nightmare client has emails going back 5 years in the office admin's inbox. This has resulted in them being unable to receive timesheets for this week's payroll run and they are scrambling to archive things to free up space.
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Those are always fun to deal with.

"I can't get anymore emails!"
-because you've reached the limit storage of emails that the company allows you
"Can't you just increase it?"
-no, you have to delete some of your emails
"I did, they're all in the recycling bin"
-that doesn't mean they're deleted, they need to be actually be removed forever
"but what if I need them in the future?"

That last question can get you in an infinite loop if you're not careful on how you answer it.
 
Celebrate Nite said:
I never understood the whole "don't ever turn off your computers when you clock out" unwritten rule that office jobs have. I'm like the only one that turns it off and I've never had any of the issues everyone else does.
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Not turning off your at the end of your work day allows patching to be done overnight.

The worst are the ones who leave it on but lock it, which causes patches to fail because Windows won’t reboot with an active user session, so patches get installed, but they don’t get loaded, and the user has shit stop working until they reboot like that poster was talking about.
 
McKennai said:
clients tend often to make last minute requests/expecting more then what was agreed upon initially at no additional cost.
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This is why I love SCRUM. First, you can charge by the sprint. The end of every sprint is a functional product, and they can't add requirements to a sprint that's in progress - they can only add them to a future sprint.

Client: I want features A,B,C, and D.
Developer: okay! A minimal functional product would be A and C, and I can deliver that in two weeks. That'll be sprint 1. Then we can review and plan for sprint 2, which will work on B and D.
[starts spring 1]
Client: Oh wait, I just remembered! I absolutely have to have feature E! It's so, so, so important!!
Developer: okay! When we plan for sprint 2 you are welcome to prioritize that.

The other thing I love is that you can put the effort needed to implement features they request after development starts below the zero line on a burndown chart. Like this: (sorry, can't upload it).


Client: why the fuck is this taking so long??
Developer: well, as you can see from this chart, the work you initially asked for would have been completed on week 11. But you've added on extra stuff so now it's going to run into week 14.
 
byron said:
they can't add requirements to a sprint that's in progress - they can only add them to a future sprint
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In theory sure, in practice if a client makes a giant fuss you'll get so much pushback for not wanting to do something that someone above you will eventually bend the knee and your sprint requirements will magically change, sometimes with no additional time given. You'll then hear that this is what "agile" really means and that this is normal or a one time exception or that you should be able to handle that anyway or whatever. I have zero faith in any work system being a sufficient protection against a higher-up gaslighting themselves into thinking that their client will leave if they don't succumb to their demands.
 
work in tech support long enough and you'll understand why josh spergs out on users asking dumb questions, it's what we all want to say to the customer in our heads but can't because it would get us fired. josh has no such limitation.
 
SIMON THE PIEMAN said:
In theory sure, in practice if a client makes a giant fuss you'll get so much pushback for not wanting to do something that someone above you will eventually bend the knee and your sprint requirements will magically change, sometimes with no additional time given. You'll then hear that this is what "agile" really means and that this is normal or a one time exception or that you should be able to handle that anyway or whatever. I have zero faith in any work system being a sufficient protection against a higher-up gaslighting themselves into thinking that their client will leave if they don't succumb to their demands.
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This is the unfortunate reality of any project management framework or methodology: clients have the the money, so they have all the leverage. They will change things at a whim. You either suck it up, or you find work elsewhere. It can be mitigated, if you have a competent product owner standing between you and the client, who can manage expectations and talk the client down from unachievable demands, but such people are rare as hen's teeth. Even if you're lucky enough to get one, they will burn out sooner or later, because the task is never-ending and the reward is more of the same.
 
teriyakiburns said:
Even if you're lucky enough to get one, they will burn out sooner or later, because the task is never-ending and the reward is more of the same.
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We had a guy like that in my last job, last I heard from him he switched careers to carpentry.
 
I've said it a thousand times, and I'll probably say it a thousand more. No Jeets. Prepare yourself when you find yourself dealing with them. You might occasionally find a competent Jeet. Don't count on it. A Jeet coworker will wait until the ass end of the day to reply to any question you ask or request you make. They will slow the flow of work as much as possible, only accomplishing one task a day (if that). Conversely, if someone's cracking the whip on them, get ready for a stream of @s coming your way. Help. Help. Are you there? Please reply. I see you online. Please advise. Hurry. Very important. *puts a call on your calendar 5 minutes from now*

Not to outdo themselves, also be prepared for slimy backstabbing. If you have a meeting where you need to report progress on a set of team tasks, bet money that the Jeet will have scrambled to accomplish the bare minimum just before the meeting. He won't tell you that he's done this, but he'll make sure to impress upon the person you're presenting to that he got his task done. He's just waiting on other people to get a move on now.
 
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