Overheard at the Office #16

$COWORKER: We have this one phone that is randomly rebooting no matter which port it's plugged into.
$VENDOR: Is the switch rebooting?
$COWORKER: No, we've checked into that. And the client said no other phone has rebooted, just this one. I've got some logs from the phone.
$VENDOR: Are you sure the switch isn't rebooting? It has to be the switch.
$COWORKER: Yes, I'm sure. Here's the uptime of the switch in figure 1, and here's the log from the phone showing the resets that it's receiving from the PBX in figure 2.
$VENDOR: (ignores the email with the figures, calls in) I've checked the logs of the PBX, it hasn't logged any problems. Therefore it's either the switch rebooting or a bad cable. Can I close this ticket?
$COWORKER: No, you haven't done anything. It's not the switch. We've had this problem 3 other times with this model PBX, and there's dozens of cases of this online if you Google it. And could you stop calling at 3am? I told you nobody is here.
$VENDOR: (Sends three more emails, two of them over the weekend, ignores $COWORKER's reply to all of them Monday morning, closes ticket due to "lack of response.")

At one point $VENDOR was in a webex screen sharing session with $COWORKER and was actively trying to wrestle away mouse control to prevent $COWORKER from pulling up the phone log. Remind me why we pay for this "support?"

Overheard at the Office #15

Me: <troubleshooting an issue and then see a dialog box with a major error>
Me: How long has this been happening? It's probably related.
Client: That's a click-through error, don't worry about that.
Me: A what?
Client: A click through. It's nothing.
Me: OK.....

Overheard at the Office #14

We received a phone call from an on again/off again client. They were having a new switch installed to replace one that was the victim of a power surge. First they need passwords.  Then they call back because they guy has been there for 5 hours now and they're still down. So I head out.

Me: How's it going, I'm Alan from $COMPANY.  What seems to be the problem?
Contractor: We're having trouble turning on PoE on this switch. I'm not really a network guy so I've got my guy remoted in from the office and we cant figure it out.
Me: Are you sure this is a PoE switch?
Contractor: Sure it is, aren't they all now days?
Me: <Looks at the part number written on the box and shaking my head>
Contractor: What?
Me: You brought the wrong switch.....

So I go to talk this over with the client, and when I come back, the contractor is gone (he packed up his stuff and bolted).  I'm able to cable up everything that needs PoE to the half of the blown switch that still works, and everything else to the new non-PoE switch, and then connected the new switch to the rest of the network (yeah buddy, that's why there was no connectivity for the devices plugged into it) so they're at least back up for now. Maybe this is why the other company charges so much less?

A few days later, the vendor ships out the switch that the client paid for, and I'm called back out to finish the job. Client is happy and I'm a hero for a few minutes until I bring up how they should do something to protect their infrastructure from surges. A good surge protector is a lot cheaper than a new 2960 every year.  Cisco switches should't blow out this often, look at all these dead ones in the rack because you're too lazy/cheap to have them pulled out. Aaaaaaaaand now they're not talking to us again because all we want is to constantly try to sell them stuff.  See you in another year or two when this one blows.

Overheard at the Office #13

My coworker was on a call with Cisco troubleshooting a completely nonfunctional setup of Cisco Smart CallConnector, and it wasn't very productive this far. Then all of a sudden the Cisco technician had an aha! moment.

Cisco: I've found the problem!

Us: Great, what is it?

Cisco: You guys haven't set up your email server yet. This needs a working email server.

Us: That's odd, this client has been receiving mail on this server for years......

Cisco: Impossible, the mail server isn't up. I can see that it's not working!

Us: Ok, I'll play along..... How can you tell that?
Cisco:  I can't telnet into it on port 25.

Us: Yep, that's by design.

Cisco: Huh?

Us: The server only accepts external traffic from the spam filter on port 25.

Cisco: <silence on the line>
Me: Presses mute and lets out a loud sigh.

Overheard at the Office #12

A colleague tossed a Slurpee cup into the trash.  The next morning it was on his desk with a yellow sticky note stating "Please do not throw liquids in the trash. Building rules."  He then put another yellow sticky over it asking for a copy of these building rule, and then tossed it back into the trash (still containing a sizable amount of liquid).  It wasn't there the next morning. 

I would have probably just left a note to stop wasting my sticky notes.

Overheard at the Office #11

Dear $NetworkTeam,

The email server appears to be down.  Please advise when it will be back up.


--Message received via email.

Overheard at the Office #10

Coworker: ....I'm just trying to mitigate what has to be done out there.
Me: No, if it needs to be done, then you need to do it.
Coworker: right....
Me: Don't use big words if you don't know what they mean.