The most stupid/awkward things you saw/heard in the IT environment

[Octopuss]

After a few things I saw in this company I feel like it would be interesting to check what else can people come up with elsewhere.

This guy I work with creates extra 10GB partition on the same physical disk where he puts the pagefile (auto size) on XP machines. In fact he did that with W7 machines as well (that's double WTF) until I somehow managed to convince him Windows 7 is new enough to have much better memory management. He still does it on XP ones and refuse to listen to any arguments, even yelling at me for not using proper solutions.

What have YOU seen that makes you want to smack your head on a wall, asking yourself WTF is this??! repeatedly?

[jaclaz]

This guy I work with creates extra 10GB partition on the same physical disk where he puts the pagefile (auto size) on XP machines. In fact he did that with W7 machines as well (that's double WTF) until I somehow managed to convince him Windows 7 is new enough to have much better memory management.

He still does it on XP ones and refuse to listen to any arguments, even yelling at me for not using proper solutions.

I guess some lines need to be drawn *somewhere*.

Having the pagefile on a "separate" partition BUT on the "same" disk, makes sense in some situations (as an example multi-boot).

Having an auto-managed pagefile is IMHO "pure folly", BUT if you really want to have it auto-managed, having it on a separate partition, makes some sense.

10 Gb for the pagefile is - this time IMNSHO - "pure folly".

This said, I would love to know the arguments you used (the ones that your colleague was NOT convinced by).

What have YOU seen that makes you want to smack your head on a wall, asking yourself WTF is this??! repeatedly?

Usually?

I have observed over the years two kind of opposite behaviours, one by Admins/Network manager in big companies, the other in small, almost unmanaged businesses, both of which could be connected to "ignorance" and "arrogance/supponence", relating to security:

1. "since I am the Admin I block everything, I don't care about what is needed by the people that actually work, this way I won't have security problems"
   
2. "since it is a small firm, I don't need any security, "they" won't target me, hence I don't need an antivirus, let alone block ports or protocols
   

Another couple ones (same sources):

1. "it's not possible" (no matter what the question was)
   
2. "no problem" (no matter what the question was)
   

Explanation:

Admins in big companies tend to be less friendly than ones in smaller one, but often both have no idea of whatever the problem is or what a suitable solution to it would be.

jaclaz

[Octopuss]

I think his argument was something about poor memory management and fragmentation under XP, which is nonsense in my opinion. I tried to tell him what he is doing is nonsense because by setting 10GB partition up for pagefile he basically sets it to fixed size already, which is pretty much the same as my way - 4GB fixed size on system partition (I see no point in more in this case given the amount of stuff that runs on the machines)

I really have no idea what all his reason for this were as he basically shouted at me instead of making any points. Guess it was mostly about fragmentation.

You do have a point with multiboot, but since we don't use that at all, it's out of question

Btw the admin stuff, there's another subcategory in the first group, the hypocrites: yells around about how everything is a security hole, blocks right and left, monitors how often people go to take a p***.... and has ICQ running on his machine - that is after speaking how terrible thing it is to others of course. Had such #$%% as a boss in my first job and I left after 1.5 years cause there's no way to work with such people.

[Tripredacus]

There was one instance where a person in management wanted to connect a DC powered computer to a forklift battery charger... To which I said "that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard" followed by "I'm going to wait outside to greet the ambulance, let me know when its safe to come back inside."

[Octopuss]

HAHA!!! That's pretty **** good one

We had a few cases of women in the customer's office asking us to solve non-working sound on their computers. Colleague went there and asked her "Yeah ok, so the sound is not working - mind telling me where the speakers are?" (yeah, of course there were none!) The reaction stunned him twice as much as the stupidity of the original question, because said women started to look UNDER THE TABLE.

[Ponch]

I have observed over the years two kind of opposite behaviours, one by Admins/Network manager in big companies, the other in small, almost unmanaged businesses, both of which could be connected to "ignorance" and "arrogance/supponence", relating to security:

...

1. "it's not possible" (no matter what the question was)
   
2. "no problem" (no matter what the question was)
   

I tend to see the same people adopting both behaviours just depending on who's asking. Often for the same request. Sometimes a few minutes from each other.

Now for the funny part, I had a EU civil servant stumped in front of his desktop's screen asking me to come over and see why clicking on the "Talk" button would not allow him to converse with people on his screen, ...video conference, live, the 6th box was empty, just his name in it.

-You have no microphone and no camera...

-Oh...Do you think that might be the problem ?

-...yes.

The guy was "Technical Advisor", salary about 4times mine.

I had one (even higher level but not "technical") asking me why he wasn't able to log on, screen was black but ON, unresponsive keyboard and mouse were not bringing it alive, back from sleep mode or whatever... pointing to his newly installed docking station..... the laptop was at home. I am not inventing this. Even his secretary had a hard time not laughing in his face.

A colleague of mine was asked to install arab fonts in Windows for someone having received a Word doc that was not displaying properly... After install, asked if it was "OK now", the guy then realized... he didn't know arab anyway!

I had a guy working a whole day on a Word doc that had been "recovered" by Word. Each time he was saving it with Ctrl+S, he was prompted to give it a new name, he was hitting "cancel" and at the end of course, he closed Word without saving. Furious when told the document wasn't saved, he demanded his computer to be reinstalled because there was a bug !

I once had an "advanced PC repair" colleague adding an IDE cd burner in a desktop. I was doing something else aside but just to be on the safe side, I said "check the jumpers". When done and the pc wouldn't boot , I said "you did check the jumpers, didn't you ?"

-"yes I did, ...there was one."

[FlierMate]

I don't like if my doctor and his nurses talk about me in behind about my bizarre behavior because of my illness.

It is not ethical to make fun of our customers or consumers -- at least not the negative ones.

[Tripredacus]

I don't like if my doctor and his nurses talk about me in behind about my bizarre behavior because of my illness.

It is not ethical to make fun of our customers or consumers -- at least not the negative ones.

Well its normal for people to blow off steam, but they definately shouldn't be doing it when you are there!

[FlierMate]

I don't like if my doctor and his nurses talk about me in behind about my bizarre behavior because of my illness.

It is not ethical to make fun of our customers or consumers -- at least not the negative ones.

Well its normal for people to blow off steam, but they definately shouldn't be doing it when you are there!

It was what my doctor told his nurses: Don't talk about patients while staring at them.

[vipejc]

I asked an IT clown what the Windows Registry was, and he said a place to register Windows. He was CompTIA A+ certified. LOL