Weird and Cringe things you've seen while working in IT - Since everyone is too lazy to make such a thread where IT bros can vent

[Bad Take Crucifier]

The antivirus software Kaspersky was banned from use in US government computers after it was determined to be spyware, transferring sensitive files back to the Kaspersky home server.

Kaspersky bans and allegations of Russian government ties - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Trump signs into law U.S. government ban on Kaspersky Lab software

President Donald Trump signed into law on Tuesday legislation that bans the use of Kaspersky Lab within the U.S. government, capping a months-long effort to purge the Moscow-based antivirus firm from federal agencies amid concerns it was vulnerable to Kremlin influence.

www.reuters.com

 

[Mr. Skeltal]

The antivirus software Kaspersky was banned from use in US government computers after it was determined to be spyware, transferring sensitive files back to the Kaspersky home server.

Kaspersky bans and allegations of Russian government ties - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Trump signs into law U.S. government ban on Kaspersky Lab software

President Donald Trump signed into law on Tuesday legislation that bans the use of Kaspersky Lab within the U.S. government, capping a months-long effort to purge the Moscow-based antivirus firm from federal agencies amid concerns it was vulnerable to Kremlin influence.

www.reuters.com

So that's why we use McAfee.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

The antivirus software Kaspersky was banned from use in US government computers after it was determined to be spyware, transferring sensitive files back to the Kaspersky home server.

Kaspersky bans and allegations of Russian government ties - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Trump signs into law U.S. government ban on Kaspersky Lab software

President Donald Trump signed into law on Tuesday legislation that bans the use of Kaspersky Lab within the U.S. government, capping a months-long effort to purge the Moscow-based antivirus firm from federal agencies amid concerns it was vulnerable to Kremlin influence.

www.reuters.com

lol yeah the US government banning one of a very few effective antiviruses because they were too stupid to stop their own malware getting detected and sent to the vendor (as all antivirus software does when novel stuff is detected) is pretty cringe

 

[KonradCruise]

I had an individual call in because he was currently locked out of the mainframe, a mainframe segment none of us or any other member of another service group could access. This particular individual was apparently THE authority of the segment he was locked out of. As such when he attempted to login it would tell him to refer to [His full name] He was not able to reset his own account nor was there any other individual in the entire company who apparently had access, as such upper level IT literally told this guy to refer to himself both times he had the issue raised.

Fortune 100 corp by the way.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

Have a client I absolutely fucking hate. Built them a new website for handling their seminars. Part of it lets users log in to confirm dates of seminars or post new seminars.

Client was adamant about not wanting people to have to re-sign up. No big deal, give me a copy of the database and shutdown the old site so that there aren't any differences in data. Several days later, receive the fucking chunkiest database of users I've seen. Client fucking sent me the database for the whole site. Fuck it, I'll make do. Take what I need, ignore the rest.

Users are split across 4 goddamn tables and it's not a 1:1 reference, some users have data in 2 tables, some 3, some 4. I curse whatever monster designed this shit. Users table also has passwords as plaintext and base64 encoded. Argue with client for a week that first time logins will prompt password resets and that I do not give a flying fuck if it's an inconvenience to them, I'm not liable for stolen data.

Finish importing, computer took several hours to import and reorganise everything. Probably could have written something more efficient, but they wasted my time so I wasted theirs. "SoMe UsErS sAy ThAt ChAnGeS tHeY mAdE lAsT wEeK lOsT tHoSe ChAnGeS". Have you ever wanted to blow your brains out?

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

Plenty of airlines still have internal systems that look to be based off TN3270 type terminal access (full screen rather than line by line terminals). There are systems for building a GUI on top of such systems too.

Oh dear God noooooooo

 

[Desu Vult]

Not working in IT, but have seen a few IT related shitshows at work.

Bosses relative of some sort working as an assistant IT guy, a dumbass 20ish kid with less actual tech knowledge than your average granny. Managed to infect the whole network with viruses from some torrented game once. Also was too lazy to walk down the hall and bring an extension cable when setting up workstations in a freshly renovated office and ran a cable at ankle height across the aisle between cubicles, with predictable results. They got rid of him after a month or so.

Owners wife (different place) hired as an assistant manager or something, a turbobitch who did nothing useful but relished in pissing everybody off. IT guy quit on spot after a particularly nasty spat, told the bitch to stuff his owned wages up her ass, literally pulled the power plug on server and walked out, also turning off his cellphone. I got two free days out of this, until the company finally managed to find someone to crack the passwords and get the system back online.

Yet another different place, the IT Dept consisted of two undergrad IT students who were hired because they were the cheapest. They usually started swilling beer at about 10 am, and were passed out at about 2pm, along with several temporary hired who used their office as a watering hole. Elaborate schemes were in order at 5pm every day to find enough sober drivers and get everybody home. Quit this one myself, so don't know what became about it eventually.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I had to teach someone how to resize a photo in Paint. Over the phone. Legend has it the photo is still not resized.

I can confirm the legends. They still haven't resized the photo. Think it's less not understanding the directions and more the computer can't handle the current version of Windows 10. Offered to fix that by installing Linux. Offer was denied.

 

[Moths]

I can confirm the legends. They still haven't resized the photo. Think it's less not understanding the directions and more the computer can't handle the current version of Windows 10. Offered to fix that by installing Linux. Offer was denied.

After seeing how a cheap laptop struggles with the effort of running win10 I really wish that my generation was exposed to ubuntu or other distros growing up like they were with apple and windows so I dont have to watch this thing try to kill itself running a browser

 

[Celebrate Nite]

After seeing how a cheap laptop struggles with the effort of running win10 I really wish that my generation was exposed to ubuntu or other distros growing up like they were with apple and windows so I dont have to watch this thing try to kill itself running a browser

Ubuntu is just as bloaty as win10 believe it or not. Some of that bloat has to do with systemd. I'd avoid vanilla Ubuntu at all costs, and this is coming from someone who dipped his feet into linux for the first time using Ubuntu. If you still want to venture that route, use Lubuntu instead, it's made specifically for low-powered machines. For perspective I installed Lubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop that was made specifically for WinXP that has a Pentium M board ( Dothan 730 ) with 1GB ram and 40GB hard drive and it runs flawlessly. Otherwise, other people seem to suggest Linux Mint as a first step into the linux world

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I can confirm the legends. They still haven't resized the photo. Think it's less not understanding the directions and more the computer can't handle the current version of Windows 10. Offered to fix that by installing Linux. Offer was denied.

Not IT related as such but I used to work at a place that did professional print, large volumes and smaller volumes, and sometimes we would get a txt file that said

[PRODUCT]

[DATE]


[COMPANY]

with a note that they want x1000 of them in red on A2s for [CAMPAIGN]. That would be sent from the people in charge of marketing and design at company X/Y/Z. The place I worked at had an in-house team for layout and design that made it for them at a significant cost but it was scary to see how bad some "qualified professionals" really were. They're probably senior executives by now through the sheer lack of shame.

 

[Disco Inferno]

My cousin got a new computer and it blue screened within an hour. He had me come over (over a hour long drive) to check it out.

Turns out he didn't take the styrofoam out of the case because "I thought that kept the motherboard in place"
If he wasn't 13 I would have fucking strangled him.

 

[Devil Buster Busters]

It's baffling to me how many people like store things in the recycle bin. Had users freak out on multiple occasions because they had an important document in there and it got cleared out. If it's important why is it in the recycle bin!?

 

[Celebrate Nite]

It's baffling to me how many people like store things in the recycle bin. Had users freak out on multiple occasions because they had an important document in there and it got cleared out. If it's important why is it in the recycle bin!?

They do this with email as well. They can't comprehend that an email account has a certain amount of GB space set by the IT/company so they never delete anything, but move it to the trash and think that will save them space. Explaining to them that they have to empty the trash too is like explaining a 5 year old that they can never watch their favorite cartoon again... their eyes widen the fuck up and look like they are about to cry because apparently they have emails from 2-3 years ago that they ABSOLUTELY NEED to save for some asinine reason.

 

[Bad Take Crucifier]

It's baffling to me how many people like store things in the recycle bin. Had users freak out on multiple occasions because they had an important document in there and it got cleared out. If it's important why is it in the recycle bin!?

How is anyone this dumb? Do they store their physical documents in a trash can, too? Do they think it downloads more space to the disk? What the hell?

 

[tehpope]

I see this like many times a week. Folks say they reboot their pcs every night or once a week. PC's been up for like 400-600 hours. And they wonder why its running like hot wet ass.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

I see this like many times a week. Folks say they reboot their pcs every night or once a week. PC's been up for like 400-600 hours. And they wonder why its running like hot wet ass.

hahah gay

 

[XYZpdq]

hahah gay
View attachment 2534808

if the battery still worked on my laptop I'd have similar results, but I get power outages
I got a refurb of one of those HP not-quite-toughbooks they use in hospitals and I still don't get how it manages to keep chugging on win7 after all these years

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

How is anyone this dumb? Do they store their physical documents in a trash can, too? Do they think it downloads more space to the disk? What the hell?

Things like Exchange have limits before it wants to split things off into separate archives, I think it used to be 12GB or something like that. There was a registry hack that could double that but the problem with all of this was the awful, awful search indexing that some people relied on. It would thrash the HDD trying to do its thing to the point where the computer was unusable. Awful.

At that time absurdly priced SSDs was the remedy they never knew existed. You know how sometimes you scratch a dogs ear just right and the dog almost melts down in your lap? Some people reacted like that at their desk when they experienced their computer running Outlook on a late 2000's SSD.

 

[Real Fakeman]

Remembered a secondhand account from another tech. Someone came up to him with his work laptop and said he had a banana stuck in his laptop. Apparently he had been in a hurry and stuffed his laptop in his backpack but forgot his lunch was at the bottom of the bag, which smashed the banana into the laptop fan.

I hear about all kinds of stuff being stuck inside laptops for the same reason. One woman's credit card turned up inside her laptop.

I got a call from a woman who said her laptop mysteriously didn't work after she had kept it in her bag and not used it for weeks. She brought it in, and I noticed dark brown gunk in and around the USB and network ports. I opened it up and the motherboard had more brown stuff and corrosion on it. I asked her if she knew what that brown stuff might be and she said "Oh, yeah, I had left a banana in there too. You think that might have something to do with it?" The machine was still under warranty, so the motherboard was actually replaced at no additional cost. I did not tell them about the banana.

At a later date the same woman came in and showed me a bunch of error messages she didn't understand in Outlook, something about emails to strange addresses being undelivered. Turns out she had clicked on a phishing link and given away her username and password, and now her account was sending phishing emails to Turkey.

Some people are just complete disasters around computers. This was a schoolteacher too. I think I'll homeschool my kids, I might have seen too much.