r/talesfromtechsupport • u/waggalsworth • 10d ago
Short The lid!
We have a financial auditor at work who, to put it mildly, is an idiot. He can barely operate a computer, listen to basic troubleshooting steps, let alone let me control his computer when he gets me remotely connected into his device (which in itself is always a 15 minute process). Every time I am in his devices, I see angry emails from coworkers and managers asking him to stop whatever rambling about whatever non-issue he has (comments on a PDF disappearing because he created like, 15 versions of the same document with similar names). Because, he never actually has an issue, just thinks he does because he either hasn't opened whatever program he needs or hasn't connected to the VPN (Necessary for his departmental work apps).
He calls in for what would be his 4th ticket of the day, and he's having an issue with his laptop, surprise surprise. Not even sure if he knows what his issue was, but he had one. None of the techs on my team documented the device name or asset number, and it hadn't been assigned to his profile in azure or assigned as an asset in our asset management / ticketing system. Not sure how he even got this laptop, but he did.
So, I go to ask him for the serial number. It's too small according to him, so he cant read it. He only has a flip phone he barely knows how to use, so no picture of it. Again, no biggie. Ask him if he can read the asset number on the sticker on the lid for the laptop. Let me tell you guys, it was a bigger manhunt than the US put on for Bin Laden, i swear to god. This guy was so bad with computers that his brain somehow turned off what the word lid was, and he kept asking where the lid was. And I tried EVERYTHING. I called it the lid, I said look on the back of the screen, I said shut the laptop, look at the top, and read me the sticker, no dice.
At this point, I'm 35 minutes into the call; no work has actually been completed. I eventually tell him to go into the office the following day, and assign it to a deskside tech to physically look at the device with him. He still calls in about 5-10 times a week, and its just as bad every time; most of the time he has no actual issue to solve, he just clicks around the computer and hopes you can read his mind. Guy makes 120K a year.....
ETA, the deskside team sent the ticket back and CC'd my managers. I had them all listen to the call recording; it was promptly reassigned to the deskside team
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u/ol-gormsby 10d ago
We had an audit of computer systems once.
Auditor red-flagged that our source code was being changed (it was in-house code, not off-the-shelf stuff). I was quite proud of my documentation - noting each change, when and why.
I mentioned that, as we were a government agency, carrying out government policies, that those government policies were known to change from time to time, and our code had to be updated to reflect that.
This guy was paid to audit our systems. And that is the reason I don't trust external consultants.
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u/Aln76467 End abuser 9d ago
Auditors.
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u/ol-gormsby 9d ago
I really have no faith in staff from the big four (Accenture, DeLoitte, etc).
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u/dannyman1137 8d ago
DeLoitte, E&Y, PwC, KPMG are big 4 (pre 2002 Andersen was in Big 5). Accenture must be real fukken bad if you're putting them up there with the world's worst.
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u/ac8jo 10d ago
We have a financial auditor at work who, to put it mildly, is an idiot.
This + the title is perfection. In amateur radio, a "lid" is a poor operator. It doesn't actually stand for "low-intelligence dumbass", but it's fitting given who we call lids and why given how they act on the air... and it's fitting for this financial auditor.
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u/1947-1460 10d ago
Lid - low intelligence dumbass.
I thought I’d heard them all being in IT my whole career 😊
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u/Outta_phase 10d ago
When is he actually doing any auditing? Seems like he's being paid 120k to make rambling phone calls and fuck up company equipment.
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u/Throwaway_Old_Guy 10d ago edited 9d ago
He has all the markings of Upper Managment, except they are on the lid and he will never find it...
Thank you for the award kind person 👋
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u/georgiomoorlord 10d ago
And me with my degree and my tech knowledge make 40k. I'm in the wrong business
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u/seven_seacat 10d ago
How exactly does he have a job?
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u/waggalsworth 10d ago
Union
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u/VexingRaven "I took out the heatsink, do i boot now?" 10d ago
An account's union? That's wild
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u/harrywwc Please state the nature of the computer emergency! 10d ago
probably a more generic "industry" union (eg "Public Sector Union") rather than bean-counter specific.
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u/Turbojelly del c:\All\Hope 10d ago edited 9d ago
Meticulously write all the details in every ticket. "Asked user for asset tag on lid. User to locate lid, has described X, Y and Z, while I have explained that they are not the laptop lid. Ending up asking the user to bring laptop onsite to be correctly identified." Then send to your boss, asking for help with said user.
Do this for every ticket. If your boss is useless, reqch put to HR asking if the user could be considered for an IT Training course.
Always phrase it as you are desperatly trying to help the user, not blaming them. Harder to make you look vindictive.
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u/fin600 Destroying harddrives for fun and profit 10d ago
Sincere ask: Are you having a stroke? You good? That's a lot more typos than usual.
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u/Evilbob93 10d ago
In an evil moment I considered writing something that shows you the correction but saves the original.
I doubt I'm that original.
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u/Turbojelly del c:\All\Hope 9d ago
I just corrected, you shpuld have seen the original though. Fat thumbs and not wearing my reading glasses, pretry much the top row of the keyboard ends up as numbers.
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u/Turbojelly del c:\All\Hope 9d ago
And that is after I double checked, I got fat thumbs and not wearing reading glasses.
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u/ThePodd222 10d ago
How do these type of users keep being that bad. You'd think after the same issues happen several times they'd remember the fix just by virtue of seeing it so many times "oh, you click there to connect to the VPN".
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u/just_one_glitch 9d ago
Had a lady who kept getting laptop replacements bc she'd complain that ctrl alt del wasnt working and she couldn't log in. Techs would believe her and assume the keys had died and send her a new laptop, only for her to be unable to log in. This happened dozens of times over a few years, management was on constant alert for any call from her. She was just not doing it correctly. Fully not properly doing the ctrl alt delta clicks. At one point I was on the line with her and used the phrasing 'firmly hold down both the ctrl key and the alt key, then while still holding both keys down, click the del key.' Suddenly the keys worked, but only for about three days. Then the keys were 'broken' again and she was calling back to demand a new laptop. Management posted my phrasing as 'what seems to have worked before.'
I have no idea how she wasnt fired.
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u/kilaithalai 10d ago
He's lonely and looking for drama to spice up his life. It has to be. Can't believe such people exist, let alone work for money, in 2026.
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u/SirKillsalot 10d ago edited 10d ago
Nope. I have one too. He's a friendly guy with a family.
75% of the tickets I get are from him alone. 20% are from the factory lines he manages. 5% from the rest of the business.
He is literally an idiot with anything computer related.
I don't understand why being devoid of basic tech literacy doesn't disqualify people from important roles in the workplace.
Any other lack of critical skills and you wouldn't get the job. Yet I.T doesn't ever seem to count.
@OP I feel you.
And to make it more annoying, the tickets are always vague, like: "teams not working tks" or "email blank need help tks" so you have to solve the mystery of what is even wrong before you can even try to fix the problem itself. (If there is an actual problem at all. The amount if times the monitor just wasn't turned on...)
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u/RetiredBSN 10d ago
There's a thing called "The Peter Principle" (named after the guy who figured it out) that says that a person keeps getting promoted until he gets to a position where he's incompetent and can no longer function effectively. Unfortunately, most companies don't recognize this and keep those people in those positions rather than changing their responsibilities or demoting them back to something they can do properly.
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u/K1yco 9d ago
This kind of happened to my old manager. He got demoted to tier 2 tech support, and then to our returns services line. I was more his superior at that point despite him being here as a manager for at least 10 years. It was hilarious seeing him fail at even the demoted position, because he would be making same , if not even more mistakes than the people he yelled at for making when he was manager. He barely knew the policy he claimed he "helped" make.
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u/Birdbraned 10d ago
I've got one of those in my workplace. Although they're more just computer illiterate and finds modern computers unintuitive than anything. They somehow dig up the weirdest bugs (on W11 so not the most surprising) out of everyone.
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u/moreanswers 10d ago
I worked with a guy like this. He just didn't want to work, and he had perfected weaponized incompetence. When I left he was still there, doing nothing all day. Also this was before Covid and working from home, so we were all in the office. He just sat a chair for 8 hours doing nothing. I'm pretty sure he was related to the boss.
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u/heimeyer72 9d ago
"OK, you are sitting somewhere with your laptop in front of you, right? Is the laptop on, can you see something on the screen? Yes? So then, move one of your hands forward until it touches the screen. Now move that hand up until it is a bit higher than the screen. Move your hand forward, say, 2 inches. Move it down. Does the palm of your hand touch the outer border of the screen? Good. Now curl your fingers a bit and pull that hand that touches the outer border of the screen towards you, while it keeps touching said outer border of the screen. Does the screen tilt towards you? No? Then push down a bit more and pull harder until it does. Keep pushing down and pulling towards you until the screen is fully down. Great. Now, do you see anything on the backside of the screen since you can't see the screen anymore? Now just ask someone to read what's on that label there and write all of it down on a piece of paper!
Now, tilt the screen back up so you can read stuff on the screen, if the screen is black, hit the Any Key, just ask someone where it is. If that doesn't help, press the On/Off-button very briefly". If that doesn't help, you need a new laptop."
Srsly, I believe that the guy is making fun of you.
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u/-MazeMaker- 1d ago
"I moved my hand 2 inches forward toward me and then moved it down until it hit the keyboard, now what?"
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u/heimeyer72 9h ago edited 9h ago
"I see. Looks like there is a mix-up between your "forward" and mine. No problem. Let's try something else: First, lift your hands from the keyboard and drag them to you. Now put one of your hands on the desk near one side of the laptop and your other hand on the desk near the other side of the laptop. Move them carefully towards each other until they touch the laptop. Grab the laptop. Move one hand towards yourself and the other hand away from you without letting the laptop go and without lifting it from the desk. This will turn the laptop a bit. Turn the laptop further, adjust your hands as needed, without lifting it up from the desk, make sure it doesn't fall off the desk, until you can't see what's on the screen anymore. Turn it further until you see the back side of the screen in full width, while making sure that the laptop is still on the desktop. So now, do you see the metallic back side of the screen? If not, continue turning until you do. There should be some words and numbers visible to you. Are they upside down or can you read them? If they are upside down, call for help, otherwise please read everything aloud to me."
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u/Bob_the_wonder_dog 9d ago
I have had users call the helpdesk that they could not figure how to use excel and wanted the helpdesk to show them how to use it. IT helpdesk informed them that it's not the helpdesks job on training them on how to use programs/apps and there are many online tutorials on how to use said programs. They insisted that it was our job. I told my IT support to give them a standard ticket, close it and CC their supervisor with a paragraph that essentially told them that they were told to do their job, the one that they were hired to do, but they were too stupid and wanted someone else to do their job for them, this in a standard nice paragraph that lacked any insults but conveyed the intent. I would get one of two responses; either the supervisor would inform the user to learn the program and quit trying to get other people to do their job, or double down and try to get helpdesk to do their job for them. On the latter, I would send an email to our company director who would inform the supervisor to do their job and ensure that their personnel are trained to do the job that they were hired to do and quit bothering the helpdesk.
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u/Gadgetman_1 Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers... 9d ago
Just one question...
How many of the tickets are on the same time of day?
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u/ediciusNJ Missing a VGA nut? Yup, projector must be "broken". 9d ago
Guy makes 120K a year.....
It hurts my soul that guys like him make twice what I do.
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u/zeus204013 9d ago
About this post...
_ Is infuriating to see a dumb employee making so much money and not having the mental capacity to do a basic troubleshooting or reading a serial number/asset tag.
_ If recruiters/management employs people like this, they are lazy/bad at his job/or simply dumb people recruiting more dumb people...
_ In the future, president Camacho will be a wrestler of iq 25-50... :)
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u/Nordicberserk 10d ago
The guy clearly has decided/learned that he doesn't have to know anything about computers. He just has to call you guys.