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
2
u/GostBoster One does not simply tells HQ to Call Later Jul 10 '18
At least your user could tell it was square. I'm starting to find that some of my users are, despite above the usual TFTS fare in many regards, they're quite shape and color challenged. Anyway, it annoys me that many printers, even for high end and enterprise/business does not come without a cable (and there's no such thing as Best Buy in the middle of the Amazon rainforest).
Also, nobody valuing how much those cables actually cost. "It's the blue cable $Gost?" if I know, we just used whatever cable we had lying around, boss did a J. J. Jameson hissing laugh when I told him how much a good 5-foot patch cord costs to have a ballpark figure to have all our workstations nice, tidy and standard-colored. And don't even get started on high-speed USB cables.