Random Ruminations, Tommy T

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random ruminations – tech support humour edition

Tech Support humour

Years ago, at my first tech support job for GTE, there was a Supervisor who had that obnoxious “You’ve got mail” .wav file tagged to his Outlook incoming mail event.

Fifty times a day. “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!”

I was pretty fed up after a week of this, and the next time there was a Supervisors meeting, I went to his machine, unlocked it with my Admin password, and replaced that event sound with one I had brought from home – the sound of someone violently projectile-vomiting. It was in stereo, and so well-recorded that you could hear the secondary splatter and chunks falling from the wall after the initial – um, surge.

Then I turned the sound card volume up all the way, and removed the volume control icon from the systray. I went to several of the techs on the floor and had them prepare innocuous emails to the Supervisor and not send them until they saw him come through the door to the floor after the meeting.

He did, and they did. Puzzlement on his face turned to revulsion which turned to anger, which turned to horror when he realized that the puking and splattering that filled the air was coming from his machine. Panic when he was unable to mute the volume, and desperation as he yanked the speaker leads out of the back of the computer.

As Tech Sargeant Chen from Galaxy Quest always says:

“It’s the simple things in life you treasure.”

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2 thoughts on “Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random ruminations – tech support humour edition”

  1. Two-way street: I had one of those mid-managers, thought it was cute while I was out doing what I was paid to do to change start-up and other notifications on my desktop to “Short People”. Not too long after that I turned my back in contempt and disgust and walked away from the 300+ station network I had built and he didn’t know how to maintain.

    Never did anything for anyone again …

  2. Okay, you want to be EVIL to a cow-orker? You need to mess with *hardware*.

    Unplug their computer, by *accident*.
    Unfold a paperclip, and push it through the power cord, so that it shorts the “hot” to “neutral” or “ground”.
    Snip off the paperclip, very close to the surface of the cord. Rubberized cords will typically close over the end of the paperclip, making the change invisible.

    When the cow-orker plugs in their computer *POW* breakers blow. And the wild hunt for the fault begins. No one ever suspects the seemingly-good power cord.

    Blame it all on Clippy.

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