what are the worst calls you've gotten on the job?

[Ackmed]

Giving a 9 line.

 

[sourceninja]

I got a call where the power company had pulled a power cable out of the building that arched into the ground and somehow found a path inside our datacenter and blew the breaker on the inside of the UPS. It blew out all the caps in the UPS and that prevented the buffer needed for the generator to start. All systems were down, we had some systems with blow power supplies and the some PDU's that were fried. It was not a surge in the lines because nothing else in the building was effected, the power had to come up through the floor!

That was a frustrating night of waiting for 4 hour replacement parts.

 

[lxskllr]

For stupid shit, my mother regularly turns off the menu bar in Thunderbird, and can't use the email. It's a mystery to me how she does it with such regularity. I can't find any keyboard shortcuts that allow that.

For more important stuff, I got called out to a job where the newly poured bridge deck had a ~3/8" difference in elevation where the phases come together. As I was getting ready to check shit, my data collector puked, and I lost everything in it. I had 2 other jobs jobs I needed to be at NOW, so I went back to the office broke my laptop over my Jeep, and quit. The boss came to my house a couple days later, and gave me more money to come back.

The bridge deck? We checked the shit out of it, including coring the deck to shoot the tops of the beams, and I think it turned out to be a steel fabrication problem. The beams didn't deflect as much as they should have, so they sat higher when loaded with concrete. Fuck surveying...

 

[lxskllr]

duplicate

 

[Jeffg010]

Management has the bright idea that we need to support home networks so people can work from home.

Old lady in her 50's gets a new work laptop and everything is working even the VPN so she can log in from home. She tells me the next day she can't get logged in from home. I told her to call from her house and I'll walk her through the VPN so she can work from home.

She calls me from her house and says it is still not working. Right off the bat it is a painful struggle to get her just to click the icon. I'm telling her left double click the icon and she saying it is not working then some how she got the VPN to come up on the screen and she tries to log in but says it won't click in the user field. I'm like left double click in there so you can put you user name in, it was such a struggle. She some how gets it in and the password. She tells me it disconnected.

I tell her that I need see the log file to see what is stopping the VPN from connecting. I tell her to right click the icon and then left click on the log in the menu that will popup. She tells me nothing is happening and the mouse is not working. I said to her is the mouse plugged and she says where do I look? I said you got to follow the wire from the mouse to the computer. She then tells me that the wire is coming from the bottom of the mouse. I said wait the bottom of the mouse? she said yes. Then I asked her where the 2 mouse buttons are are and she tells me they are at the bottom on the mouse. I said in a loud surprised WTF voice “Your mouse is upside down!?!!??!”. She starts laughing like a giddy school girl. I put the phone down and then on mute, walk out my cube and punch the next cube beside me and scream aaahhhrrrrrr. So for 20 fucking mins she was using the mouse upside down! We never got VPN to work.

 

[FallenHero]

Dead on Arrival Call...50 year old guy was dead in his apartment for about a week. His eyes were the size of tennis balls and the smell was...well, I washed my uniform 3 times.

13 year old girl hung herself and was found by dad. That sucked.

Crazy domestic situation involving one of my HS girlfriends being beaten by her then b/f. End up kicking in the door with my sergeant, tasing the guy and then wrestling with him after the taser ends its cycle and one of the probes detaches. That guy was WASTED beyond belief.

 

[roguerower]

Had a plumber stop me and tell me that the poured deck had settled in the section he was hanging pipe. I told him that wasn't possible as he had structural framing on either side. I told him to run a tape from the bottom of the deck to the top of the "okay" pipe and then repeat it on the "bad" pipe. He got a smug look on his face (presumably for making the kid engineer look stupid) when the "bad" pipe came out 1" low. Then I had him run a tape from the slab to the bottom of the pipe. That smug look disappeared when the "bad" pipe came out 1" low which proved he didn't know how to hang pipe. He shut up and went back to work.

Same job, our sprinkler fitter was complaining that the plumber's piping wasn't level. Plumber foreman swore that it was. Asked what he used to level it and he responded that he'd used a 5' stick of conduit and a torpedo level. Shook my head all the way up to the office to get the auto-level. Set it up and shot down the hallway to find out that the pipe dropped down 4" in 50' and then up 3" in another 50".

 

[Sinsear]

Giving a 9 line.

Sucks. Big time.

 

[Pardus]

Got a call yesterday, that there network printer power light was flashing on/off, they said they pulled the power cord but the power light continued to flash on and off. Googled the model number, printed out the pdf.. went down there to look at it, turns out it had 2 power cords, one for a backup power supply.

Unplugged both for a minute and reconnected it, printer now working.

 

[amdhunter]

Non-computer related and probably my worst call ever.

I had a job where I had to pick up dead animals at various veterinary clinics. I hated the job, but it was money.

I had gotten called to go pick up a dead horse in a local park, and I didn't understand how in the world that was going to happen. My co-worker came by, with a chainsaw and asked me if I was ready.

I quit 10 minutes later. Fuck that.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Doing S/W upgrade on a Navy Air Traffic Control system.
Primary hard drive on system crapped out.
Because of the upgrade that was going on; unable to switch to the reserve drive.

Depot was a 6 hour haul each way; with a hurricane bearing down on the site.

Lucky, from a previous job; I knew of an unused system sitting on a military base that was only 1 hour away. Gave the into the the LtCmdr in charge and he authorized a salvage party to collect the unit and bring it back.

 

[MotionMan]

Had a plumber stop me and tell me that the poured deck had settled in the section he was hanging pipe. I told him that wasn't possible as he had structural framing on either side. I told him to run a tape from the bottom of the deck to the top of the "okay" pipe and then repeat it on the "bad" pipe. He got a smug look on his face (presumably for making the kid engineer look stupid) when the "bad" pipe came out 1" low. Then I had him run a tape from the slab to the bottom of the pipe. That smug look disappeared when the "bad" pipe came out 1" low which proved he didn't know how to hang pipe. He shut up and went back to work.

I really want to get this, but I am having a hard time understanding your description. Could you elaborate?

MotionMan

 

[airdata]

Doing S/W upgrade on a Navy Air Traffic Control system.
Primary hard drive on system crapped out.
Because of the upgrade that was going on; unable to switch to the reserve drive.

Depot was a 6 hour haul each way; with a hurricane bearing down on the site.

Lucky, from a previous job; I knew of an unused system sitting on a military base that was only 1 hour away. Gave the into the the LtCmdr in charge and he authorized a salvage party to collect the unit and bring it back.

Was the hard drive 30 years old? I heard the military likes antiquated equipment.

 

[Anubis]

Non-computer related and probably my worst call ever.

I had a job where I had to pick up dead animals at various veterinary clinics. I hated the job, but it was money.

I had gotten called to go pick up a dead horse in a local park, and I didn't understand how in the world that was going to happen. My co-worker came by, with a chainsaw and asked me if I was ready.

I quit 10 minutes later. Fuck that.

tbh that sounds fing awesome

 

[AreaCode707]

"Hey, Merry Christmas! We had a dumb HR manager put the words "union avoidance" in a job description for one of the call centers. Can you get rid of the posting?"
"Sure! Click and done!"
"Cool, now can you get rid of it from all of Google's search results?"
"...."

That was my Christmas Eve 2006. Turns out that even though the management INSISTS you should have magical powers to scrub Google's cache clean, no amount of staying til midnight grants you that ability.

 

[nageov3t]

in terms of sheer terror, the worst call I ever probably got was a panicked call from our NOC that the entire data center was dark.

not the thing you want to hear about a facility that has UPS's, redundant generators, and all that.

it ended up not actually being a lot of work for me (spent most of the night waiting on electricians to do their thing, then I just had to work on the couple dozen servers that didn't come back online automatically), but it was pretty terrifying.

the official post-mortem was that local grid power went down and at the exact same moment as the building was switching over to generator, lightning stuck the generator. ever since, we now preemptively switch to generator any time a big storm is rolling through.

 

[olds]

Non-computer related and probably my worst call ever.

I had a job where I had to pick up dead animals at various veterinary clinics. I hated the job, but it was money.

I had gotten called to go pick up a dead horse in a local park, and I didn't understand how in the world that was going to happen. My co-worker came by, with a chainsaw and asked me if I was ready.

I quit 10 minutes later. Fuck that.

I've always used a front end loader or back hoe for bears.

 

[amish]

had a dude exercise Incentive Stock Options during the year but didn't bother to tell us. ISOs create an AMT preference item which usually equals to a large balance due. so we have a call at 9:00 PM because he was in China. I get called every name in the book and told that I should have known about these things because I was their accountant. the whole issue gets run up the chain because the guy was an executive causing a huge pain in the ass.

 

[Ausm]

Anytime my Boss calls which means he s going to bitch about something.

 

[NuclearNed]

My story, newly edited & improved for this thread:


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2087133

 

[Pheran]

My story, newly edited & improved for this thread:


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2087133

LOL, I think I missed that one the first time around. Epic as usual.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Doing S/W upgrade on a Navy Air Traffic Control system.
Primary hard drive on system crapped out.
Because of the upgrade that was going on; unable to switch to the reserve drive.

Depot was a 6 hour haul each way; with a hurricane bearing down on the site.

Lucky, from a previous job; I knew of an unused system sitting on a military base that was only 1 hour away. Gave the into the the LtCmdr in charge and he authorized a salvage party to collect the unit and bring it back.

Was the hard drive 30 years old? I heard the military likes antiquated equipment.

Equipment at Dam Neck was purchased (never used) in 1980

Equipment at Oceana was installed in '82
Storm was in '83

 

[shortylickens]

Equipment at Dam Neck was purchased (never used) in 1980

Equipment at Oceana was installed in '82
Storm was in '83

Was you an ET?

 

[Rage187]

I got a panicked message that someone had ripped all of the wires out of "the hard drive " and the client was down...in Florida.

I drove 4 hours because they left the VM that morning and didn't open till 5pm. Nobody was there to answer the phone and the contact had a full VM box.

I get there and someone had unplugged the freaking computer itself and moved it over so they could plug in a space heater(this is literally on the beach in FL mind you). I unplugged the heater, plugged the computer back in. Stared at the guy who called and started it up. I then drove 4 hours back home after being there 3 mins.

 

[sixone]

Non-computer related and probably my worst call ever.

I had a job where I had to pick up dead animals at various veterinary clinics. I hated the job, but it was money.

I had gotten called to go pick up a dead horse in a local park, and I didn't understand how in the world that was going to happen. My co-worker came by, with a chainsaw and asked me if I was ready.

I quit 10 minutes later. Fuck that.

You lasted nine minutes longer than I would have.