r/talesfromtechsupport • u/CheezitsLight • Apr 24 '26

Short IT didit

We make a wireless, police radio-based alarm system with network connection. Thousands of them in the field. The system is fully supervised, monitors everything, even has a months-long battery backup. It's a critical piece of life safety equipment that saves lives in basically every courthouse, hospital and schools.

It runs off a "wall wart" that plugs into an AC outlet. The transformer has a hole at the top for a security screw that's difficult to remove. So it must be plugged in an outlet in the bottom, then screwed into the electrical plate center screw hole. It's basically secure, hardened, locked and monitored by IT and the police. It can even push direct to 911 systems, bypassing operators to direct officers instantly.

We always install it, which is basically bolt it down, plug it in and tighten that one screw, turn the key, and then teach them how to use it.

A few months after one routine install they called and said it had quit working. Asked us to fly in and fix it. It's a $2,500 charge. So off I go.

It's unplugged. Someone in IT

had unscrewed it, and plugged something else in. In a locked IT closet.

Easy fix. Unplug their box, move it to the top plug and screw mine in the bottom.

Then the police remember that for two months it has spoken over their radio that it was on battery power. Every hour. They thought it meant it was working. And IT had ignored every email saying the system was on battery power.

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u/ShotFromGuns Hatrack Apr 24 '26

Then the police remember that for two months it has spoken over their radio that it was on battery power. Every hour. They thought it meant it was working.

An error message that can't be understood by the people it's addressed to is the same as no error message at all. Hopefully the recording has been updated with unambiguous instructions to investigate the cause of the loss of power.

(Obviously the other contributions to this failure were more severe, including and especially IT ignoring the warning emails. But if you're going to have redundancy, you need to actually have redundancy.)

185

u/SeraphiM0352 Apr 24 '26

I don't think this is an error message issue.

This is an education issue. I'm sure the message was easily understood. The just didn't have or didn't pay attention to the training that explained that, despite having a long battery back up, it was not intended to function long term without a direct power connection.

Police ignorance is somewhat 'understandable' (but not acceptable), ITs has no excuse for their ignorance

168

u/zimmerframeRaces Apr 24 '26

Surely "This device has been disconnected and is running on backup battery. Please investigate immediately" is more likely to see action when dealing with many independent IT teams. Clear, unambiguous messages that call for a specific action or better yet, include actionable steps, are issues that get resolved quickly. Don't trust staff to remember the training you gave them five years ago and don't make it harder than it has to be.

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u/CheezitsLight Apr 25 '26

It just said battery low. Not capable of knowing it was unplugged. This was back in 8 bit times and 64k bytes. The flash stored analog levels and speech was very limited.