So, I work at a computer help center at a university, and we get some fun calls occasionally, but this one really got me going.
I got a call which sounded routine, it sounded like someone who was having problems accessing websites, and they said they were on a Mac and using Safari so it was my lucky day since usually it is the same problem almost every time. I confidently told them simply to reset Safari and that it would work...it didn't. I then had them delete the cache only to hear them say again the problem still persists. With those two out I decided to check their ip, it was fine, and their ethernet was in perfect order so it's not the usual problem. At this point the best option was to make sure they were registered for our network, which they were, so that was a bust too, and I had to keep going.
About twenty or thirty minutes of options later (breaking the sacred fifteen minute rule), and running through everything I could think of, I have them switch Safari to run in Rosetta mode in hopes that it would knock some coding loose (I was out of options honestly). It was at this point that the caller says, "No, it still says, 'Server is...,' it's saying the same message." Alright, that was left out in the beginning, so I asked them what the message was and they said that it was the same one that they had been getting, but they never really told me the message, even when I asked them what it was at the beginning, they just said they were getting "Nothing." I finally goat them into reading the message, which is as follow, "The Server is Busy." I nearly fell out of my chair when they said that. So, after this twenty to thirty minute call (I think it ended up being 28 exactly, but I'm not sure) I finally have them go to a website and after a brief pause of another two minutes I asked, "Did you get there?" and they said, "Yes." I then had them go to another website and they said, "Oh, well I can go to other websites and my homepage and everything, but I just can't go to this one page. It just keeps giving me that servers busy message."
This is the epic of how I found out that the desk at work is too low for me to actually smack my head against it.
The caller did also ask what that meant and it took a good five minutes or so to explain what exactly it meant to them. I did try to cut this time down by asking at the beginning for what the message said, but like I said, they weren't telling me all of it.
I got a call which sounded routine, it sounded like someone who was having problems accessing websites, and they said they were on a Mac and using Safari so it was my lucky day since usually it is the same problem almost every time. I confidently told them simply to reset Safari and that it would work...it didn't. I then had them delete the cache only to hear them say again the problem still persists. With those two out I decided to check their ip, it was fine, and their ethernet was in perfect order so it's not the usual problem. At this point the best option was to make sure they were registered for our network, which they were, so that was a bust too, and I had to keep going.
About twenty or thirty minutes of options later (breaking the sacred fifteen minute rule), and running through everything I could think of, I have them switch Safari to run in Rosetta mode in hopes that it would knock some coding loose (I was out of options honestly). It was at this point that the caller says, "No, it still says, 'Server is...,' it's saying the same message." Alright, that was left out in the beginning, so I asked them what the message was and they said that it was the same one that they had been getting, but they never really told me the message, even when I asked them what it was at the beginning, they just said they were getting "Nothing." I finally goat them into reading the message, which is as follow, "The Server is Busy." I nearly fell out of my chair when they said that. So, after this twenty to thirty minute call (I think it ended up being 28 exactly, but I'm not sure) I finally have them go to a website and after a brief pause of another two minutes I asked, "Did you get there?" and they said, "Yes." I then had them go to another website and they said, "Oh, well I can go to other websites and my homepage and everything, but I just can't go to this one page. It just keeps giving me that servers busy message."
This is the epic of how I found out that the desk at work is too low for me to actually smack my head against it.
The caller did also ask what that meant and it took a good five minutes or so to explain what exactly it meant to them. I did try to cut this time down by asking at the beginning for what the message said, but like I said, they weren't telling me all of it.


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