Embarrassing Moments in Computer Service

[Gazzak]

When I was training to be a copier tech I pulled out a $1000 drum without retracting some lamps, hence a nice long scratch along the surface and a fubar'ed drum. It didn't happen twice!

I tripped out an entire floors power by shorting out a power supply when testing with a volt meter that was set to measure amps not volts. I didn't admit to that one and they never suspected it was me.

I dropped a tiny piece of a solenoid that I couldn't find, (I looked for an hour). There were no replacements in local stock and it meant the copier was completely down until one was flown in from Germany. I found the piece later that evening in the turn-ups at the bottom of my trousers, (pants).

At one important customer I was doing some maintenance work on their colour printer, they said they had a mega important job to get out later that day so please make sure I'm done in an hour. Everything that could go wrong went wrong and I was there for 3 days!

etc...

[slgrieb]

I love stumbling upon these ancient discussion threads from 1997. Oh wait, you mean this a current discussion? Yeesh!

Sorry if you don't get the thread.

[JaxSon]

I tripped out an entire floors power by shorting out a power supply when testing with a volt meter that was set to measure amps not volts.

I have to admit I pulled that boner move also. It also smoked my voltmeter.

Another time, I was out on a major factory floor performing PM's (preventative maintenance) and plugged in my vacuum cleaner and blew the circuit breaker which took out a whole line of test stations. "But, but...it was only a vacuum cleaner!" It pointed out that they had way too many items tied to that one circuit.

[3fingersalute]

Shortly after my father's store first merged with an office supply store they asked me to unbox a desk that was going to be delivered to a bank, it was one of those presidential desks made out of cherry. Anyhow, I grabbed a box cutter and split down the seam of the cardboard on the top only to find that I had also cut a big scratch right down the top of the desk

[CeeBee]

Some years back I got a call from the 3rd shift supervisor that nobody could log on.
It felt like a good chunk of the network was down. Both DCs not responding... Odd, since they had dual power supplies into different UPS-es and dual NICs plugged into different switches... Failproof...
...NOT.
Went to the office, power to the servers was out. Cleaning guy decided to plug the vacuum into a UPS power strip and took it out due to overload. Then he proceeded to plug into a different one since the first wasn't working...

[3fingersalute]

One time (many years ago) in my dad's computer business we used to use Western Digital's software that came on floppy with hard drives (I think it was called EZ Drive if I remember correctly) to do hard drive mirroring when a customer would buy a bigger hard drive. I had done dozens up dozens of them and then my dad decided to upgrade his. He was especially nervous about losing his data, but I assured him that it was something I did on an almost daily basis and it would go smoothly............

So I ended up accidentally picking the wrong drive for the host vs. source and it actually allowed me to mirror a 2.1GB drive over top of an 850MB......or at least part of the way until I caught what I had done anyhow. I was able to stop it and use some data recovery tools to get most of the data back, but damn that sucked.

The good news was it was my dad instead of a customer. The bad news was it was my dad (also my boss) so it made me look like a chump.

[74AD]

A couple of months ago I tried to logon to our work amazon prime account and couldn't get in. I tried some other work related websites (the CC management site, the CDW portal etc) and couldn't get in. I kept retyping the right passwords, but kept getting denied. I'm starting to freak. I reboot my machine and go into full on panic thinking I've been let go when I can't login to my computer either.

then I notice I have CAP LOCKS on.....

: DOH :

[3fingersalute]

A couple of months ago I tried to logon to our work amazon prime account and couldn't get in. I tried some other work related websites (the CC management site, the CDW portal etc) and couldn't get in. I kept retyping the right passwords, but kept getting denied. I'm starting to freak. I reboot my machine and go into full on panic thinking I've been let go when I can't login to my computer either.

then I notice I have CAP LOCKS on.....

: DOH :

I've done that one before - thankfully most logins remind you that caps lock is on, but not all of them.....

[74AD]

it happened right after a shake up here in which my Boss (who always had my back) was let go and my supervisor (who I couldn't say the same for) took over for him......

[Pinnacle-Project]

I dropped a tiny piece of a solenoid that I couldn't find, (I looked for an hour). There were no replacements in local stock and it meant the copier was completely down until one was flown in from Germany. I found the piece later that evening in the turn-ups at the bottom of my trousers, (pants).

That reminds me of something. I have since had surgery on my eyes but a long time ago, my vision was pretty bad (20/600 and 20/400). I was dumping something big into a dumpster and knocked myself in the face. In the process, one of the lens popped out of my glasses. I looked and looked and looked. I was desperate to get that lens back because I could not perform my job without it. Finally, I found it in my shirt pocket.