RANT: All the Issues are My Fault and You Won't Answer My Questions
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So I hooked my equipment back up at my parents' house last night. Now this morning apparently my mother spent four hours fighting with issues that are all my fault.
Issue 1:
My mother couldn't connect to the FiOS router's wifi this morning. When FiOS routers experience any traffic that exceeds basic web browsing and some Netflix, the wireless seems to crap out. Happened at my previous residence. The fix is reboot the router. Now I thought I'd scheduled my cron job to reboot the FiOS router last night at 5AM EDT but I accidentally enabled WAN telnet and not local telnet, so it didn't. Rebooted it remotely today and fixed that configuration error on my part, and she connected no issue. Now the cron job is set to run again every morning at 5AM. This one was actually my fault, so I accept that.Issue 2:
My mother was yelling at me how she couldn't scan and she HAD to scan something NOW. So first I'm thinking the MFP lost a network connection, so since I rebooted the router, I tell her to reboot the MFP. Finally, after she's sending me a screenshot showing that her machine is not communicating, I ask her to check the IP of the machine and what her computer is setup to use as the IP. This is when she tells me it's wired directly to the computer. First facepalm.So I ask her to confirm it's hooked up via USB. Now my mother is an intelligent woman, and terms like ethernet cable and USB are usually no issue for her. However, when she gets upset, it's almost like her mind does this mental dump and she forgets everything she knows about computers. After much shouting on her part and me telling her how I can't help her if she doesn't answer my questions, she tells me her printer has always been connected to her computer via ethernet. This confused me at first, and it only got worse. Come to find out, she's connected an ethernet cable from her printer to the ethernet jack of her computer. She then proceeds to yell at me about how this is how it's worked for the past year and how she's always done it. My exact response: "How...that's not how that works..."
Now, I suppose that POSSIBLY she has some weird P2P thing going and that's how it's worked but that also makes no sense to me as that'd require an incredibly complex setup and I just don't see how she could have done that. I'm trying to explain to her that using an ethernet cable for this is not correct. It either needs to be networked or using a USB cable. Again, more shouting about this is how she's always done it and I'm still just as confused. AFAIK, it's a Canon MFP but I can't confirm that.
Issue 3:
Finally, she asks if she can just take it to Staples and get it scanned in there. I told her she should be able to. I told her she just needs the document and a flash drive. Well the reaction I got was as if "flash drive" was some term in a foreign language she'd never heard before. Now I know when I moved out and went to Texas, my mother usually had 3-4 flash drives laying around at any given point. She used the term regularly. But now she seems to have lost them all and any memory of what a flash drive is. She ended up raiding one from my father's desk.Now I enjoy helping non-technical people with their issues as a rule. It's why I like working at Staples. However, when it comes to family, apparently I'm a moron and my questions aren't worth answering! GAH! I finally told my mother I could not help her if she would not answer the questions I was asking. I even offered to take my lunch and run home and fix this for her. She declined. So now I'm just left baffled and irritated. I understand if you don't know why it's doing what it's doing or if you're frustrated, but if I'm asking a question and trying to help you, not answering my question is not going to help anyone!
Here is the screenshot btw...
Thanks,
A.J. -
Maybe not an employer but still... http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/926832-venting-about-your-employer-online
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Maybe not an employer but still... http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/926832-venting-about-your-employer-online
Seriously? I don't see how this could possibly apply.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Maybe not an employer but still... http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/926832-venting-about-your-employer-online
Seriously? I don't see how this could possibly apply.
Sharing too much information online and ranting out someone you where helping..
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Maybe not an employer but still... http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/926832-venting-about-your-employer-online
Seriously? I don't see how this could possibly apply.
Sharing too much information online and ranting out someone you where helping..
We all rant about end-users, etc. This one isn't even tied to a job. That's why I don't understand why you're making an issue out of it.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
Now I thought I'd scheduled my cron job to reboot the FiOS router last night at 5AM EDT but I accidentally enabled WAN telnet and not local telnet, so it didn't.
You enabled telnet on the WAN! =O
Did you set the username and password to admin/admin too? =P
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@Aaron-Studer said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Now I thought I'd scheduled my cron job to reboot the FiOS router last night at 5AM EDT but I accidentally enabled WAN telnet and not local telnet, so it didn't.
You enabled telnet on the WAN! =O
Yeah, that was an accident. I meant to enable it over the LAN. I'm not worried. Anyone could have figured out the username (it's "admin") but the password is fully complex and 17 characters. It was open like that for 12 hours tops. Everything was fine.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
It was open like that for 12 hours tops. Everything was fine.That's just what the hacker would say! O.o
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@dafyre said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
It was open like that for 12 hours tops. Everything was fine.That's just what the hacker would say! O.o
My point is that even if they did try to brute force it because someone happened to stumble across an open WAN telnet connection, they'd run out of time before they'd get in. I'm guessing but being fully complex and 17 characters, they'd have a tough time doing that in 12 hours.
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Well...17 characters in 12 hours
GPUs have only gotten more powerful. I actually need to do a test with my GPU as it's fairly beefy.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Well...17 characters in 12 hours
GPUs have only gotten more powerful. I actually need to do a test with my GPU as it's fairly beefy.
That's the number of password combinations there are in a 17 character password: 4.1812034e+33
Assuming 26 upper-case, 26 lower case, 10 digits and 33 symbols/punctuation marks.
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You sure bitch about Staples a lot, either your managers or customers, that certainly cannot be good. The fact you mention that company by name at all is reckless.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@tonyshowoff said:
You sure bitch about everything a lot
FTFY
I complain about a lot of things, sure. However I also have made many comments about how much I enjoy working there, how much I care about my job, some of the great people I work with, and so on. I don't deal well with people who are lazy or apathetic at the store, because that job is very personal to me. It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me. So yes, I complain. But it's because I'm frustrated by things that I can't fix, and I'm the kind of person who likes to fix things.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me
So the store would close down if you left? Was it not open before you started?
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@thanksajdotcom said:
I complain about a lot of things, sure. However I also have made many comments about how much I enjoy working there, how much I care about my job, some of the great people I work with, and so on. I don't deal well with people who are lazy or apathetic at the store, because that job is very personal to me. It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me. So yes, I complain. But it's because I'm frustrated by things that I can't fix, and I'm the kind of person who likes to fix things.
Management, HR, etc never see the complements, 10,000 complements mean nothing compared to 1 complaint, and they can take any complaint and make it into a bigger deal than you think. You have to remember that other people cannot understand/read your own feelings about things. Also consider if someone important saw any one of your bad comments, none of your good ones, by the time you tried to explain it to the person firing you, it'll be too late.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
So the store would close down if you left? Was it not open before you started?
Not sure how I'd take that comment.
There is nothing wrong with taking pride in your work, having worked in some teams where I KNOW I was putting more effort/quality in but that was my own drive that wanted to deliver, Yes the team would still get it done but sometimes the part you play can make it much better.
I agree that AJ needs to be a lot more careful with all the negativity on-line, I've seen a lot of in my short time on this community. Yet that comment wasn't the most helpful you could have made.
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I don't mind my own employees bitching about things or customers, but never online, at all. In fact I'm sure there's probably a clause in your contract/work agreement/whatever where you aren't allowed to do anything which may embarrass the company. We have that. I've fired people for doing exactly what you've done here. The main thing is: you're a low level employees, the fact you have a manager in your store says you're in no real position of administrative authority, which means the store will go on without you. Nobody wants to promote someone who talks crap about the company or customers, but especially the company, and especially in public one the Internet by name.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me
So the store would close down if you left? Was it not open before you started?
The store did okay before I got there, significantly better while I was there, and once I left in June 2013, it has since done quite poorly in the tech department. Since I've come back, the entire store's business has picked up. I've looked at the numbers. There is a direct correlation between me working there and increased store sales. It wouldn't just pack up and shut down, but it would not do nearly as well as it could.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me
So the store would close down if you left? Was it not open before you started?
The first rule of being indispensable is to come to the understanding that you are totally dispensable.
Given that Staples ran just fine without you for your time in Texas says to me that you are over-inflating your self-importance.
Now get back to work.
