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Who says the help desk is just a place for young IT professionals to do password resets all day?
The help desk can be a career-stop full of adventure—with questions both repetitive and reptilian.
IT pros who started their careers at the help desk answered IT Brew’s question of the week: What is the strangest help desk ticket you’ve ever received?
The answers did not disappoint, and one involved a lizard.
Brian Blasius, infrastructure engineer, Hyland: I remember, one time, I got a work order from someone saying their son had somehow accumulated a bunch of “A” keys, probably from school, and they swapped out all the keys on their keyboard with As. So, we had to set up a new keyboard.
Chris Archer, director of cloud native platforms, Cardinal Health: I had someone who called to tell me their cupholder was broken, referring to their CD tray, in our distribution center.
Bryan Ridgley, senior engagement manager, TEKsystems: So there was a company that was releasing to consumers a brand-new gaming console. And this was a couple months before the actual release. So we had people saying, “Hey, bring a production model to my office.”
Blasius: Oh, and then another weird one…Someone submitted a request saying their laptop was oozing some sort of gelatinous thing out of their fan, and I’m like, “Well, maybe their battery’s leaking or something.” So they brought it in, I’m putting my gloves on, and making sure I’m not gonna get battery acid on me…eventually, I looked at it and I’m like, “This is Head & Shoulders.”
Keely Wilkins, security engineer and evangelist at Check Point Software Technologies: The printer wasn’t working. Nobody could get it fixed…I was, like, the third technician on the call. And we finally had them open up the printer and there was a dead lizard in it.
Drew Rose, CISO and founder, Living Security: I mean, you know: “The printer’s not working.” There’s no paper in the printer. “My computer won’t turn on,” Oh, it’s not plugged into the wall. It’s kind of the simple stuff…[people] go to the worst-case scenario, and they need help, or they feel overwhelmed, and they want somebody else to come and handle it.