Cold...colder....

[badstar]

So last Thursday during my afternoon/evening shift, when I was doing some Actual Work (tm), a call came in that forced me to ask the customer to describe the situation a couple of times over to be sure I was understanding what he said correctly before determining that his scenario was not possible (In a nutshell, he was trying to tell me that he had the software for one of our videoconferencing units installed on a third-party bridge and that he needed help accessing the software because the guy that used to maintain it left the school and didn't give him the password.

A bit of nonsense and hair-pulling later, I've gotten it through to him that the only way he could be experiencing the particular situation as described would be if one of those unit was actually connected to his network somewhere. It finally dawns on him and he says "Oh, man. I guess I'm going to have to find it. All I know is that it's not in my building...it's somewhere on campus.

I forget which school this was, but I know that it was a university with a rather large campus. Later on, I was telling my supervisor about this, and he wondered if the guy could have called up the former employee to find out...and that if he did, he hopes he left the job happy and is willing to tell them where the unit is.

As a result of this conversation, I spent a good while imagining a very sadistic campus-wide game of Hotter and Colder to locate this $40,000 piece of equipment. "You're in the student union now? Okay good, you're getting hotter. Second floor? Cold, colder...Third floor? Oh, you just lost it...

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[ranger-hotsauce.livejournal.com]

From the other side, I once had a home office support (not computer) person become irate and verbally abusive with me because they insisted my store couldn't possibly have the lock configuration that it had. Never mind the fact that I was standing there looking at the thing. I finally had to get a locksmith on the phone to tell her that yes, we really did have to separate locks for the door. The kicker? *She* filed a complaint about *me*.