Five Scariest Service Desk Calls

Here in the US, this evening marks a time when a vast majority of children dress up as any number of ghouls and goblins and request candy. At the same time, movie studios and story tellers try to capitalize on this period of tricking and treating, launching their scariest and most unsettling tales. In reality, few realize one of the most frightening places to be is a service desk. We’ve taken a bit of liberty with a Halloween-focused list of support requests (after the break), but they are certainly similar to some of the scariest things you might hear.

Of course, as you read on, remember that sometimes these simple problems make working at a service desk hard, and sometimes they can make you laugh. Cheers to all of the service desk professionals manning the desk on Halloween!

“The network is down” – The four words you do not want to hear, and tend to cause screams in the server room. Don’t panic. If the down time is because wear wolves may have chewed through the wires, their tends to be plenty of silver coating on most electronics – this problem just may solve itself.

“I need my password reset” – While the infamous password reset makes you cringe each time you get a call about it – this just might be the work of nefarious gremlins. Little known fact is that their favorite item to steal – passwords. Good thing you automated the process for resetting passwords, or at least we hope you did.

“My mouse isn’t working” – We find that plugging it back in usually does the trick. If it’s a wireless mouse, vampires may have also have liking for batteries.

My computer froze” – Did you try to “turning it off and back on again?” There may be bigger problems here – ghosts. And we’re not talking that software from Norton.

“I think I have a virus?” – Considering what comes through most support desks, worst case scenario, this just may be case zero for the zombie apocalypse. Stay calm though, and find out what the virus is affecting. If it’s not their computer, we really hope you’ve been working on that cardio. Also, don’t forget Rule #2.

Image: Flickr, PugnoM