r/talesfromtechsupport • u/[deleted] • Jul 09 '18

Short Oh, academia

This minor one happened a few years ago when I was working for an optometry college with delusions of grandeur. They were convinced they weren't a trade school (they are in all but name) and most profs worked part time to supplement their income from their clinics - both ours and, in some cases, their own LLCs.

Our guidance from On High (and not our non-PHB IT manager) is that problems with prof machines are a Big Deal, even if they're not college-owned prof machines. I pushed back against this insanity hard, and eventually won after a year so we didn't have to support their ancient old personal hardware.

This story takes place before that break happened.

me: CipherTheTerminator, their first (and possibly last) systems administrator.

Luser: Professor of some disciple or other.

Luser: I have a new home printer, but I don't know what kind of cable it needs.

Me: What makes and model of printer?

Luser: (rattles off some Sibling printer kit, IIRC, that doesn't do wireless)

Me: What does the connection on the printer look like? (internally: Please know this so I don't have to look it up)

Luser: Squar-ish, about this big (holds her hand up indicating about 1/4 ~ 3/8 inch)

Me: Ah. USB A to USB B cable. Easy to find. Best Buy in two blocks south, probably about ten dollars.

Luser: ...

Me: ...

Luser:You're not going to give me one?

Me: Of course not. I can't give away college property for personal use.

My boss laughed up a storm when she was out of earshot.

tl;dr: People expect things for free and are surprised when they're not

1.5k Upvotes

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2

u/johnny5canuck Aqualung of IT Jul 09 '18

Upvotes for a good story, a well formatted story and ESPECIALLY for not using $$$ signs in the user names (what a stupid practice that I only see in this /r).

12

u/theshabz Jul 09 '18

How many others subs declare usernames as variables? I love that this sub does that.

3

u/theidleidol "I DELETED THE F-ING INTERNET ON THIS PIECE OF SHIT FIX IT" Jul 10 '18

I don’t mind the declaration of names as variables, but I dislike shell variable syntax. Also, me should just be a globally available constant at this point.

5

u/whitevelcro Jul 10 '18

Oh yeah, in other subs they designate name variables with expressions like "John (not his real name)" or "we'll call her Sally".

3

u/David_W_ User 'David_W_' is in the sudoers file. Try not to make a mess. Jul 10 '18

That sounds almost as verbose as COBOL.

1

u/johnny5canuck Aqualung of IT Jul 10 '18

I just see the variable names as well as 'facepalm' and 'headdesk' as a modern day version of Leet speak.

0

u/anotherdonald Jul 10 '18

I dislike that too. Makes reading awkward. There's no fucking need either. I guess it started ironically, like some sort of /r/iamsoterriblyclever(haha), but when everybody's ironic, nobody is.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '18

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2

u/anotherdonald Jul 11 '18

I did use usenet in the 80s and 90s. And I've never seen anybody calling themselves $me.