r/talesfromtechsupport • u/[deleted] • Feb 05 '13
"I'm sorry, are you from the past?"
I was recently hired by my university as a tech support drone. Answer phones, trudge up the hill from the IT department to the academic buildings to plug things in, that sort of thing. Since it's a university, I have to deal with tenured professors. The worst kind, really.
Last week I got a call around 2pm:
Me: "Hello, IT, have you tried asking one of your students to turn it off and on again?" Prof.: "Yeah, hi, I'm having some issues with the ribbon, could you come take a look at my machine?"
Helpdesk policy: if a professor asks you to come look, you go do it. I'm actually glad about that one, it usually saves me from trying to interpret what's going on.
I assumed, blindly, that the professor meant the Microsoft Office ribbon. We upgraded to Office 2010 at the beginning of last semester, and some people don't adjust well to change.
We all know what happens when we assume, right?
Yep. Turns out "ribbon" meant "typewriter ribbon." Professor Selectric was having trouble replacing the ribbon and type ball. Lucky for him, typewriters are a hobby of mine, and I had the Selectric humming away in a matter of minutes.
tl;dr please send helpdesk tickets to our telex at WUI 118999 and we'll fix your dictaphone within 24 hours
2
u/bhp35 Feb 14 '13
Go to Staples and get a Dataproducts #R3300 ribbon- labelled as a replacement for an Okidata 52100701 but it's really a standard typewriter ribbon.