r/TalesFromTechSupport - ChatGPT Says To Do It THIS Way!

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1:00Hello and welcome back to Karma Stories. I'm Rob and I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today I have some stories for you from the tales from tech support subreddit. A couple things before we start. At the end of this video I put in a little bit of an update about Jen and what's happening there with her and the family. And also I want to call out one of my commenters. So Tanya 8117 who said, dude you need dental work. Thanks as if I didn't know. I actually had an appointment to get all of my teeth out on December 9th of last year. But then my wife had a major medical issue on November 20th as most of you already know. And my appointment got pushed back to February and that's okay. My concern on this one is that Tanya 8117 if you're of that worried about other people and think you need to comment on them and their appearances online. I really hope everything's going okay in your life. But I also hope that making that comment about me made you feel a little bit better about yourself.

2:01Alright, so regards from snaggle tooth and let's jump into today's stories. This story comes to us from Lenery and MQ. That time I had a photocopier repainted. I worked for a medium sized company. For our 200 or so co-workers we have about a dozen printers and one photocopier. It's an old machine 17 to 18 years old but works as it should. It's been maintained by the same contractor for its whole lifespan. Who I just call the printer whisperer as he really knows printers. He informed me that the copier reached its end of life as parts that need to be replaced in the near future have been phased out. So when they break he won't be able to replace them. We should get a new one soon. Okay, I asked for suggestions. He sends me a few. I choose one. The new machine is from the same manufacturer, is able to do everything the old one did, has a similar UI, has a lower cost per page, and because we are a loyal customer of him he can give us a bit of a discount.

3:03Sounds good. I forwarded this to upper management. They gave thumbs up, so I ordered it. It arrived. The printer whisperer assembled it, did the initial setup, so far so good. The next day I was out of office when I got a short email from the CTO, who was one of the approvers. The new copier has to be sent back immediately, and before the next order, the CEO must be consulted. Yeah, that's not how that works, I thought. You see, it was a custom order. The machine was manufactured for us, and besides the printer whisperer is a one-man show, his company would be hard hit if I just return this many thousand dollars worth of equipment, which he isn't legally required to take back. But our 20 year professional relationship would definitely suffer. In a small city like ours, it's hard to find a good contractor, and the printer whisperer really knows printers. Once paper constantly jammed in the old copier, I called him, explained the problem on the phone.

4:05Yeah, here and here, there's a plastic panel, one screw holds it in place on its left side, take it down. Behind it, in the upper right corner, there will be a plastic gear that's probably missing a few teeth. He told me, and exactly it was, on the phone, and he was there in an hour with a replacement. So the next day, I saw it out the CEO. So, what exactly is the problem with the new copier? It ugly, what? It looks like every photocopier ever made. I'm sorry, what? It ugly, couldn't you have bought a prettier one? Looks weren't on my requirement list when I chose this, lower cost, brand new, similar UI, high availability, etc. But it looks hideous, it's a photocopier. It doesn't matter how it looks, it's in the back office. Only our co-workers will ever see it. If you buy a car, you also choose a nicer one over an uglier. Yeah, there are things bought based on looks, and there are photocopiers. It's dark, the previous one was lighter. It had a beige front, you know, the color every photocopier was made since photocopiers were invented.

5:10The new one is dark gray. Don't they have a lighter version? No, it's being made in this one color. Can we repaint it? What? Sure, I don't know. I called the printer whisperer about our new copier. Is it available in lighter colors? Why? Why? No, it isn't. Why? I summarized the story to him. Can we repaint it? His brain threw a kernel exception trying to compile this. Finally, he sighed, whatever, just don't mess with it insides. So we made a new design for the copier, similar to the old one. Luckily, only the openable trays and panels were light colored on the old one. The side was darker and we retained this style. So I could remove the same panels from the new, threw them in my trunk, and gone to a decorative company. Put the panels on their desk and ask if they could repaint them. What are these? Front panels of a photocopier. What? What? Our CEO would like it in a lighter color, but it's only available in this one.

6:10They managed to hold poker face while I was in there and accepted the challenge. Got the panels back a few days later, assembled the thing, and I admit it kinda looks better. But since then, all my coworkers tease me about what I should repaint next time. Jumping down to the comments on this one, we have one from a user call, throw away old guy, it says, I, for the life of me, will never understand how someone can rise to the C-suite, let alone CEO, with this kind of mentality. They will ignore the fire just so they can focus on what is not burning. Another commenter down below called Logic Balm said, On one hand, I firmly believe that CEO is one of the best positions we could replace with AI. And on the other, this is the kind of decision it would probably be trained on. Alright, let's be honest here, we could replace most of the CEOs with a magic eight ball and a golf playing robot. I feel like OP missed out on a giant opportunity here, they didn't need to take those parts in to get them painted. They just needed to go to a vinyl shop, they could have done seasonal colors on the printer,

7:13or colors of things that the CEO really likes, put the company name on it, put the CEO's favorite sports teams on it or something. Even buying multiple vinyls had to have been cheaper than getting the darn thing painted. This story comes to us from Nightchate 0013, it was working before I left for vacation. In the mid 2000s, I was working for a small WISP wireless internet service provider in a town with a military base nearby. Part of our network extended over the base and either due to the owner's setup or some signal from the base or maybe the fact that we were using 2.4 gigahertz, we had a fair share of issues at the time. The owner was basically absent and working for another company about two hours away while going through a divorce. I was left dealing with support issues, sales, setting up equipment for our installer and some PC repair services. Anything network wise I couldn't figure out, the owner would remote in and deal with. Our network was based around static IP address sets where the tower was a .1 and any of our equipment was always an odd IP address and customer devices had an even IP address right next to it.

8:24Everything was built on private IPv4 space, though a few had static routed IPs as needed. So one Monday fairly early in the workday, I received a call from a customer about 20 miles from the office who was having a problem with his internet connection. I pull up his account, find his IP pair and start poking around to see what was working. I first started pinging the tower sector his equipment was connecting to, then adding a ping to the CPE customer presence equipment and finally his personal device IP address which in this case was a small router. So the tower was working fine, no excess latency or drops and same for the CPE but the customer's address was not responding at all. I asked the customer a few questions and asked him to check the cabling and such from his end but as far as I could tell everything on my side was working. He said it was all working on his end before he left on vacation and that no changes had been made so it must be on our end. We went back and forth a few times and I told him I would be happy to come out and take a look at it directly but if it was his equipment at fault it would encourage service charge.

9:32He didn't care for that idea and said he would check things again and call back later. I left my pings running and checked them throughout the day just in case the problem was intermittent and only his place was being affected at this point. The customer called in again just after lunch and reiterated that his internet was still not working. We talked about a time for me to come by and take a look and scheduled for around 4pm that afternoon. Then I could close up the office early and just head straight home since my place was a bit closer to him than the WISP office. He still insisted the issue was not his equipment but understood it would be a charge if it wasn't. About the time where I was closing up the office to head over and deal with the issue that particular customer had been having I received a phone call from him. And he was quite contrite. He informed me that his internet was working now and I no longer needed to come over to look at it. It seems that unbeknownst to him before leaving on vacation his wife had decided to unplug the router.

10:36One of the earliest questions in the troubleshooting I always asked was if everything was plugged in and I also suggested rebooting the router. Choosing to lie nearly cost him a hundred bucks for some guy to take 30 seconds to check the cables and plug it in. Jumping down to the comments on this one we have one from a user called Brax4Tex. It says, I learned that I needed to trick folks into actually checking the cords or power cycling equipment. I'd ask an unexpected question like, could you pull the power cord out of your router and tell me what color the metal tip is? That would force them to actually check instead of knowing it's already plugged in. Way more effective. I'd use something similar in tech support before with the customer but more along the lines of an ethernet cable. If they're really really tech illiterate you can say to them, oh well that ethernet cable might have been plugged in the wrong way. So could you unplug the one from the computer and then the other end from the router and then swap them around and plug the other ends into the computer and the other end into the router.

11:38And then we'll see if that works because at that point you know for sure that cables plugged in as long as they can figure out how to do that. And you can continue on with your troubleshooting. Close your eyes, exhale, fill your body relax, let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1800 contacts. Oh my gosh they're so fast. And breathe. Oh sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton cross-training tread plus. Powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. Helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at 1-Peloton.com.

12:45You always want the best for your family. And that means only egg lands best eggs in your kitchen. Compared to ordinary eggs, egg lands best eggs contain 6 times more vitamin D, 25% less saturated fat, more than double the omega-3s, 10 times more vitamin E, and more than double the vitamin V12. So why give your family less when they can have the best? Add egg lands best superior nutrition to your next grocery list. Better taste, better nutrition, better eggs. This story comes to us from Fine Key 4594. People think they're helping by showing me what their AI chat bot said, but it just doesn't. Lately, there's been an influx of end users where I work that have been adding the response chat GPT, Copilot or whatever LLM they use says. This is either while I'm on a call with them or written in a ticket or email. I have been solving a user's problem when they just say, I just asked chat GPT and it says X. At that point, I am already close to resolving it. At this rate, it just feels like an insult to my intelligence and experience because I have enough experience to not be told by someone.

13:53Not be told by someone's prompt from an AI chat bot on how to fix their issue. The most recent one is where someone wants an incoming web hook on Teams. They sent me the answer chat GPT gave them and said they tried it and it didn't work. I mean, I will likely have to do a call with them to see what exactly they were trying and if we have restrictions in place somewhere, but this is just one example. Another example is someone wanting a new laptop for their specific role, like using Photoshop for example. They sent me what their chosen LLM said and when I looked for these laptops, the AI listed, they are no longer something you can purchase and are end of life. I then just did my own search and found them something and got it approved. I really wish people would stop using their AI chat bots to tell me how to do my job because it's usually wrong or outdated or I already know the answer. If I want to know how to do something, I will just search Google for people who historically have the same or similar issue or read it on one of the related subs or my existing knowledge.

14:56Okay, so I admit I do use AI quite a bit to help schedule out my day and remind me of things that need to be done because my memory is worse than a goldfish. But I completely understand from playing around with this AI that if you ask it something and you need an answer that's based in facts, well, you just might not get it. In fact, you might have better luck going down to the local pub, talking to the regular that is completely pissed off his rocker and he might be able to tell you better information. Don't get me wrong, I know AI has its place for certain things, but when people go to it asking about medical issues or go to it for tech support issues, the consequences of things being wrong are just horrifying. To drive home the point I just made a little bit more, this next story comes to us from Pretty Boy. But chat GPT said, we received a very strange ticket earlier this fall regarding one of our services requesting us to activate several named features.

16:01The features in question were new to us and we scoured the documentation and spoke to the development team regarding these features. No one could find out what he was talking about. Eventually, my colleague said the feature names reminded him of AI. That's when it clicked, the customer had asked chat GPT how to accomplish a given task with our service and it had given a completely hallucinated overview of our features and how to activate them, contact support. We confronted the customer directly and asked, where did you find these features, were they hallucinated by an AI? And he admitted to having used AI to reflect and complained about us not having these features as it seemed like a brilliant idea and that the AI was really onto something. We responded by saying that they were far outside of the scope of our services and that he needs to be more careful when using AI in the future. May God help us all. I think one thing we have to remember when we use a service like chat GPT is that GPT could also stand for gullible predictive text.

17:08What everybody using AI really needs to do is type something into there, ask it a question about something you already know a lot about and then see how wrong it is. Because if you're an expert in something and it hallucinates a bunch to you about stuff that you already know, well you can only guess just how much it's hallucinating about the stuff you don't know. This story comes to us from BeWade 9113. This better fix my problem or I'll come over and trash the place. First time poster here, I worked for many years as an applications engineer doing tech support in the EDA, electronic design automation industry. My first job was in the mid 80s with the company that sold PC board CAD machines. This was a time just before the standard computer platforms became the norm and the company had designed their own hardware workstation based on the Motorola 68000 processor. The machine was equivalent to these some three workstations that came out around the same time.

18:10They originally wrote their own operating system, but eventually ported to a Unix BSD 4.2 as customers demanded standardized platforms. The company developed a hardware accelerator for routing PC boards that were similar to the workstations, but were headless. We called them root engines. They had no graphical monitor, no keyboard, no mouse and no hard drive. We booted on a five and a quarter inch Unix floppy and then routing jobs were submitted to it over the network. A common problem was that if a job was submitted that required too much memory, the machine would hang with no indication of what was going on, unless you had a terminal connected to the serial port, what we called a debug monitor. And if the root engine wasn't shut down properly before being rebooted, it would require a manual file system check that could only be done using the debug monitor. We didn't supply debug monitors with the root engines, the customers were expected to source their own standard terminal. They weren't required, but they were strongly recommended. I was the tech lead doing support for the root engine, and so I was pretty used to helping folks navigate these supportability issues.

19:17Most of the PC board layout people at that time were used to doing manual layouts using tape on a lightboard, and weren't always very computer literate. Our workstations were touted as being very user friendly and could be used by layout folks with no specialized training. My problem case started when I heard that a customer had been so profane and abusive to our normally imperturbable hotline phone screener, no email back then, that she had been reduced to tears. Apparently, he refused to submit to the normal case assignment and call back process and demanded that he be provided immediate help. Normally, we'd ban abuse of customers, but this guy worked for a local company that our CEO had been a founder in, and so my manager decided to try to work with him. We learned that his field engineer had been trying to teach the guy how to keep his root engine running via the debug monitor and how to run FSCK to clean up a bad bloke floppy, but he just wasn't getting it. My manager and I visited him and I also tried to train him to properly maintain the boot floppy. I got nowhere with him as he was untrainable.

20:23In the end, we just made a stack of 10 copies of the boot floppy and told him that if the root engine ever failed to boot, just try a new floppy, and if you run out, let us know, and we'll make a new stack of boot floppies. As we're getting set to leave, my manager was doing the usual thing of summarizing the resolution of the issue stating that this duplicate boot floppy solution should resolve his issues. That's when the customer replied, it better, or I'll come over and trash the place. My manager ignored the threat and we left. Not long after that, I read a newspaper article saying that our customer had been arrested for kidnapping his estranged wife. We never heard from him again. So the main problem that I see in this story is that they refused to ban this person way back in the beginning because they worked for a company that was founded by the CEO. Um, that doesn't matter. If you're abusive to somebody on the phone, you can go f off. Then when they gave this person the second chance that they never should have had, they said it better work, or I'll come over and trash the place.

21:29Yep, that would have been the end of you being our customer with my company. There would be nothing after that. This episode is brought to you by eBay. On eBay, behind every car and part, it's a story waiting to be shared. I read about this guy who bought a nearly scrapped 2020 Porsche Cayman. He rebuilt the whole thing all with parts he found on eBay. And now, that came in his out tearing up the track. From Toyota to Ashen Marens, eBay has thousands of cars and the largest online selection of vehicle parts and accessories. eBay, things, people, love. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso, introducing Virtuo Up, the latest and a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever and dedicated brew over ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Zip for yourself. Shop Virtuo Up exclusively at nespresso.com

22:34AI is incredible. They can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem, Pirate Style. But it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief and it doesn't need to be taught. Because Slackbot isn't just another AI. It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com forward slash Meet Slackbot to learn more. Alright, normally at this point we would close things up and say goodbye until the next one. But I pre-recorded a video to give you guys an update on Jen because some of you had been asking. So we'll go ahead and jump into that now. Hey everyone Rob here. So quick update on how things are going with Jen and the family and everything else in our lives right now. So we're now what is this January the 4th. So she's been out of the hospital since December 2nd. I believe it was that we came home.

23:34So it's been over a month just over a month and she's at the point now where she is proficient using her walker to get around the house. She can go up and down the stairs on her bum. No problem. Getting up. She does sleep upstairs in this room right right over there every night. And that's a wonderful thing to have her backup stairs. She can walk a little bit on her own if I'm there to basically hold her up in case she stumbles to one side or the other. But even that is getting better and we're quite happy to see that. She's still a long way away from going back to work that's the doctor said that we're going to revisit things by April 1st for the possibility of her going back to work even on a reduced activity level. And so we'll see how that goes. Her mental health still isn't completely there because she can't do the things that she used to do and that's weighing very, very heavily on her, especially when she sees that.

24:42I'm doing everything in the house for the kids and trying to keep the house going and trying to get my work done here as well, which I obviously haven't been doing very much recently. So there is that. But again, because of you guys, because of the community, we haven't had to really worry about the income from YouTube. Although it will become a concern in a few months again, it has been an amazing thing that you guys have done to help us out there. And we really appreciate that. The kids are doing well. They've had a two week break off of school for Christmas and Christmas Day was awesome. It was different. Don't get me wrong. We weren't able to do some of the things we normally do, but we made the best of it. And the kids had a great time and that's really what matters out of the whole thing. New years, one of our kids stayed up with us to watch the ball drop on in New York, as we usually do on TV. And that was great as well. Things are slowly getting better, but they're still going to take quite a bit of time before she's back up and able to do everything that she used to do.

25:46One of the things we're noticing also is that she's she's very focused on things. So if she has a task at hand, she focuses on that. And everything outside of that task really kind of disappears. So like she was winding up balls of yarn for one of the kids a couple of days ago. And she did this for about an hour. She was going through different balls of yarn and winding them up, which worked on her motor skills, which is a good thing. But it was like nothing else was going on around her. She wasn't paying attention to anything going on around her. And so I'm hoping that's something that will come back in time. And that's just a side effect of the anti seizure medication that she's on. So anyway, that's where we are right now. Thank you again to each and every one of you for your support. I hope this update is enough for you for the moment. I'm hoping to post up another update video on its own that actually has Jen in it and might actually have the kids in it as well. As I mentioned in a previous one, we are starting a family channel soon. And we're working on that. We've already got some footage for it ready to go.

26:49So more news on that coming soon. As far as this video though, though, as far as this video goes, though, we'll go ahead and cut this one off here. I hope each and every one of you has a wonderful day today. And we'll see you in the next one.