The Stupidest Fix ever told to me

For some 25 years, I was in charge of Technical Support for 3 companies. During that time, I and my techs were responsible for keeping everything running. Installing, repairing and maintaining all equipment and machinery to keep production online.

After that, I worked for a couple of years doing technical phone support where I never met so many stupid callers. They wouldn't listen and preferred to rail against our product. I would tell them just listen, do as I tell you and your problem will be resolved. No telling how many times I heard people say they were university professors or professional engineers who had worked with and built computers for 10-30 years, and yet these assholes called ME to help them.

But they didn't want to listen to any advice so WTF call? Finally they would listen and when they did as I instructed them, the device worked as it was supposed to, they would slam the phone down rather than admitting their call fixed the machine and god forbid they would ever thank me.

Not everyone was like that, but I'd estimate 30% at least...so give customer service agents a break, especially when its a technical issue....most of them really are just trying to help you solve your problem.

The company I worked for farmed out their techs to work on various accounts for big companies. You think you are talking to one of their people but the fact is they are outsourced but at least it was in the USA.

So during my time there, I worked on 3 different accounts....the one where I got this stupidest fix call was for smart UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) that used software to control a UPS.

Some tech working for a small company had installed our smart UPS's on about 15 of their machines...but he didn't follow the directions so every single one of the UPS's had a red error light that was telling you there was a problem with the UPS.

Now he called for another problem and we resolved that but I asked him to describe which LEDs were on and thats when I found the red LED error condition. Now I'm on the phone with this guy and tell him that red LED must be off or the purpose of the UPS would be negated entirely.

After maybe 3 minutes trying to get him to reinstall it under my direction, I hear a banging sound and he has taken the cover off the UPS...I ask him what he was doing and he said he had fixed the problem...???

I ask him what he did to resolve it without reinstalling and he said he just CLIPPED THE WIRES to the LED! I told him that fixed nothing and the first time they had electrical problems or failure, this UPS would not kick in to protect the computer.

The guy is clearly a cocky little SOB so tells me thanks for the help, now he is going to go clip the wires on all the other UPSs because he didn't want to have to reinstall the software, then he hangs up.

I tell my supervisor and make note of this in the call log in case they do call back when everything fails...but I never forgot how lazy and stupid this guy was...