The world of technical support is like a reflecting pool. To those who exist outside, it appears to be a deep, mystical place; bottomless, terrifying, foreign. The truth, however, is that the pool is only about three feet deep, and the bottom is grainy silt over sharp, hurty rocks.

I should know--I work technical support. Not phone support--long ago, I served my time in Call Center Hell, and I would never go back to that. No, I now do internal desktop support, face to face support where my customers are also my coworkers.  The job is interesting, in a masochistic sort of way. You find there are generally two types of people who work desktop support--those who do it because they have no ambition and are lazy, and those who desperately want to be system administrators, but are too inexperienced. I am currently in the latter pool.

From January 2000 to September 2001, I worked at a medium-sized Internet startup in Houston, Texas.  At this company, we had two tiers of support. There was Tier 1, the Helpdesk. These poor bastards sit in a big glass area and take calls from our on-site lusers. They're supposed to do as much troubleshooting as they can without getting up out of their chairs. If the luser's problem is too complicated or too inconvenient to solve via phone troubleshooting (or if the luser is too stupid or stubborn to handle instructions), the Helpdesk person creates a trouble ticket and assigns that ticket to Tier 2, Desktop Support. I was Tier 2.

For fourteen months, from March 2000 to May 2001, there was one particularly amazing person working Helpdesk. His name was George. Actually, his name was not George, but I will refer to him as George, because even though he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, he doesn't deserve to be publicly humiliated. And I don't want to be sued or something. Yeah, that would suck.

For your edification and amusement, I have captured screenshots of some of the helpdesk tickets produced by George (the observant reader will immediately notice that we use Remedy at my place of employment). Words cannot describe some of the things he wrote down. Complacent, ignorant, unwilling to learn--all these and more apply to George.  He worked Helpdesk for over a year, and he learned nothing. No amount of explaining or tutoring or training helped him. He had no concept of anything. He was a rock. 

Be forewarned: The links on this page are image-intensive. I've clipped and chopped as best I can, but the only way to truly impart the pain and agony these tickets bring is for me to display the screenshots themselves. To keep the load times down, there are five tickets per page. Also, I've not included any of the work logs or solutions, just the problem description box. It's better that way, trust me. And, one final note--to protect the anonymity of all parties involved, I have removed any names of people or printers or other assets referenced in the tickets, so if you see a blurry spot, that's why.

For further information on the background of the Chronicles or anything else you might want to talk about, head to the discussion boards.

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