Why is it that some people have a hard time admitting they've made a mistake?
I received a call on the support line from a relatively new employee at a nearby remote office. She was yelling and screaming that her PC was not working.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Find out what other shenanigans IT has to endure in "Stupid user tricks 6: IT idiocy loves company." | Follow InfoWorld's Off the Record on Twitter for tech's war stories, career takes, and off-the-wall news. | Subscribe to the Off the Record newsletter for your weekly dose of workplace shenanigans. ]
I tried to walk her though the steps to determine the exact problem, but she wouldn't answer my questions. She just kept repeating that she was sitting there working on her computer when all of a sudden the screen went blank.
That was the most I could get out of her because she was being difficult, to say the least. Besides calling me every name in the book, she said that her computer never works. It is always broken, though this was the first call our IT department had ever heard from her. She demanded that I show up in person to fix it now, then hung up on me. I tried calling her back, but she would not answer.
I knew that if I didn't leave right away to go fix her computer that she would very likely file the complaint up the chain of command until it got to the CIO, who would then ask me why this problem wasn't taken care of ASAP. So I headed off to the remote office.
When I got there, I noticed there was no power to her computer or monitor. I also noticed that there was a space heater under her desk that was turned on. Several years before, the company put in place a strict rule that no one can plug a space heater into a power strip because of fire concerns. All space heaters had to be plugged directly into the outlet.









