First line support tales: great job if you have strong nerves

We support the office of one service company and would like to tell a little about our work. To cheer up, so to speak. In general, our day looks the same: we come, log in to the cisco agent, sit down at the phone and begin to listen to the users' Wishlist. We sort out something ourselves, we transfer something to the second line nearby. Despite the fact that the customer’s office consists mainly of engineers, the tickets are not very different from the tickets of the oil and gas company or state-owned company. Of course, without having to drive 200 kilometers to plug the printer into a power outlet (a real case), but still.

Although, for example, this difference manifested itself very strongly when the security guards once again gave the task to walk through the offices and see who stores the recorded passwords at workplaces. At first, no surprises - somewhere in every thirty records and sticks to the monitor. The problem was that if in accounting these are the correct passwords (“And how does the spy find out that this is the password, huh?”), Then the cunning engineers intentionally write down some random combinations of characters. Apparently, kidding over the security guards.

Of course, technical experts and technicians living in the office, for the most part, solve problems on their own (well, or put very clear tickets where everything is done in a couple of clicks). But there are also various "additional services", such as: a dining room or a gym. Some of them generally sometimes give us lots of joy with their tickets asking them to install World of Tanks on a computer. Or: “I hear people in the monitor, but no one hears me!”

But there are situations when ordinary users give out something extraordinary. For example, I especially remember the call with a panic about the fact that the window does not close, but it is urgent. Remote connection is not thrown. Well, probably a personal laptop, something went wrong, the user urgently needs. We sent enikey. It turned out that there was a girl left alone in a large office, and she could not reach the window handle. A strong wind blew.

Cars were pushed out of the parking lot a couple of times, once they helped to pump the wheel. Why? Because they knock on us when they don’t know who to contact. We are support. We will always help. In ITSM, business hours for such things are written off under the “unsupported service” column - before, these were all sorts of things with application software that are not part of our SLA, and now for the most part, these are just these strange requests. No, of course, we filter them, but still sometimes we do it one way or another. It is very difficult for the user to explain what is with us and what is not. The most striking example is when a person does not receive a sandwich in a vending machine on the floor, but cannot return the money, he first beats the vending machine, and then writes a ticket to us.

Naturally, everyone needs everything yesterday - but this, I think, is a given for every first line.

Sometimes there are days of hell - this is when users come time for a planned password change. For such a day, 70–80 calls can be received per employee: everyone needs to log in. This is not counting the usual problems like running out of toner or a broken power supply.

There are very few problems with viruses - the company has good NGFWs and sandboxes, so all epidemics pass by. The only thing is again personal devices. They are protected by the savvy, but the same guard suffers. I had a ticket about a crazy guard who clicked on a video about the State Duma and got into porn. On the spot, it turned out that he was looking at some excellent site where YouTube blocks were just drawn, but in reality it was an IMG with a referral link to a porn site. I then saved the psyche of man.

Another person almost blew the roof of our engineer. The ticket is this: when he copies and pastes the login and password, it turns out to log in. When you enter with your hands - no. Searched for a long time. Then, almost by accident, they looked at the encoder - he had O in the login was Russian, not Latin, like everyone else. Who and how did this is unclear.

Often, personal laptops are brought to us to repair - reload after a system crash, rearrange something, and so on. Since users still work for them in the office, we help (semi-officially, again - “unsupported service”). Users sometimes thank you. Again, if girls usually have sweets and cakes, then the guard is always clearly and specifically affixed with beer. One and the same. Like a watch. It seems that they have an internal instruction there, how much beer and for what to give.

Because of the auto-generation of logins “the first letter of a name is a surname”, innocent people often suffer. Tickets are great - Evgeny is the least lucky. Well, at least with the name Banny we have no one. Here we act as psychological support and introduce the user to a catalog of about a hundred such wonderful logins of existing employees. He realizes that he is not alone, and calms down a bit.

Once, the security officers intimidated a girl from accounting that she wrote a special ticket so that we would move the monitor on the table 11 centimeters to the left. By the way, with monitors, a frequent question from accounting when replacing is whether the shortcuts are saved. Calm down. Saved.

Once asked to enable Sony PlayStation4, and as part of a supported service. We look - it is really supported, now there is one in the rest room.

We are constantly being knocked by people who are stuck somewhere in the elevator (not necessarily in the office) when there are problems with the air conditioners. There was once a ticket "we have a rehearsal here in the gym - we need guys to dance."

Complaints about the lack of electricity - to us. The screen needs to be changed in the corporate bus - to us. Once an employee went to the balcony to watch the cable and accidentally closed. I called the general line, I had to write as a ticket. In general, sometimes we differ in intelligence and quick wit.

Once the signalmen complained about the poor reception of wi-fi in the office. They hung a new access point right inside. They took laptops and went to work in the dining room. The next day they dragged some suitcase from the warehouse, measured the field everywhere, calmed down.

There are funny situations when people do not log out, and their colleagues begin to write wild tickets on their behalf. “Make me coffee” is the easiest. Once the user wanted to learn how to play table tennis, and on the floor above we have just a gym with a table for him. Well, we look - I put a ticket like this. Because I decided not to call, apparently.

There is a vampire user: he has been writing applications for 6 years only after sunset. We don’t know him, but we close tickets. Probably some special to support the communication lines of the Far East. By the way, yes, for the night shift, the most interesting time is 4-5 in the morning, when Irkutsk wakes up and begins to set urgent tasks.

Users harness. Recently, for the first time I came across a person who redraws the entire layout (including on the mouse) - a left-handed person is more convenient for him. And I had a whole adventure. When a new person gets to know his “admin”, sometimes it’s “can you see and choose everyone?”. Some users have direct phones of specific engineers hanging next to the workstation - despite the fact that we did not give them. Somehow I helped the user with hotkeys - showed a wonderful new world of fast work. On the same day, several more tickets arrived - he shared with colleagues what we are teaching.

Of course, we also sometimes become the causes of incidents in the office. We’re testing or soldering something - firemen come to prescribe their own lyuley. Once again, we had a whole drag from the eychars - they washed windows in the office, so we printed naked women for these guys and glued them from the inside. They thought they would be happier. No, they filed a complaint, saying that we insult their human dignity. They wanted to be kind - it didn’t work out.

Well, today, probably, we will get on the head from our colleague Stas. Because I just can’t not tell this story. We have two rooms, we are in the first, and Stas and the team are in the second. The fact is that we once every month met every user who came to visit, listened carefully and said that Stas specializes in his question. And he will solve it best of all. The user went into another room and addressed him personally. Stas almost lost his mind, thinking why everyone goes only after his soul. Well, now, probably, will find out.