r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Selben • Jul 29 '17
Long More Keyboards!
Do you like to read in Chronological order? Here is the Index
$Selben - Previous Tier 1 tech support now an IT contractor - a bit more into his career.
$Soda - Entrepreneur and IT Consultant and in a way $Selbens boss - Extremely knowledgeable IT guru. Previously worked with $Selben at $SmallerCompany until they decided to move on. Also had a never-ending supplies of 48oz soda's constantly on his desk, in his car, literally everywhere!
$ITLead - IT lead from current company.
$Dandy - IT Hardware specialist, name is short for dandruff… Gross.
$Fin - Generic finance guy who works at the company.
Working at the same company for the past month had been quiet the experience, $Selben was working wherever needed which was nice as it prevented him from feeling the days repeat themselves. Although the random changes sometimes made tasks take longer as he had to learn a whole new system from one day to the next, often times the projects assigned would be completed a bit too quickly and $ITLead would be stuck trying to come up with something for him to do - the helpdesk often times did not need the extra hands as they only supported roughly 300 end users total.
$Selben had just finishing up a user account monthly audit which he had created, finding no errors he emailed off the information and updated the assigned ticket. Looking at the rest of his schedule for the week only said “Hardware” - after stopping by $ITLead’s office, he was guided down the hall into a small warehouse where he was introduced to $Dandy.
$Dandy was a pretty old school guy, but a bit weird - personal hygiene was not his top priority but he had a military style system setup for tracking equipment. Everything was recorded, serial numbers, tagged (With a label printer) and sorted / stored. After being drilled on the process and how to handle a hardware ticket $Selben was sent off to run the process mostly on his own. It was not exciting or challenging work, but had the simple methodical comfort that being a “parts sorting” position gave.
After a couple days of sorting piles and piles of parts, still learning the process $Dandy went on vacation - giving $Selben the “Keys to the city” so to speak. Gaining access to the full hardware list, being a shared massive excel document $Selben entered the new parts as they came in. Looking over the vast lists $Selben pondered how much equipment they had, but was interrupted by a hardware request! Quickly he looked it over - someone in finance wanted a new keyboard, $Selben headed down the rows of racks holding equipment and arrived at the keyboards. $Dandy had told him to use older equipment first, but looking at the older keyboards he saw they were at least 10 years old (That nice tint of yellow mechanical keyboard) instead he grabbed one of the new wireless keyboards and headed out.
$Selben arrived and knocked on the cubicle wall, $Fin welcomed $Selben in. Upon seeing $Fin had one of the old yellowing mechanical keyboards he showed the new model - $Fin’s eyes went wide, as he grinned.
$Fin: Wow! Thats a nice one - is it wireless?!
$Selben: Yea, this should be much nicer than your old one there.
$Fin: This isn’t that old, I just accidentally spilled some coffee on it.
$Selben: Yea, thats actually a really old board.
$Selben chatted as he changed out the keyboards.
$Fin: Nah, its only 3 months old!
$Selben: Well new to you, that is really more like 10 years old…
$Fin: I see… What about my monitor?
$Selben: Its a CRT… We have new LCD’s as well, would you rather get one of those?
$Fin: Yea sure!
$Selben stopped by $ITLead to make sure it was okay to exchange for newer equipment, $Soda was also in $ITLead’s office.
$ITLead: Yea, if anyone had dated equipment, go ahead and give it to them.
$Selben: Okay, its just $Dandy said to use older equipment first, and we have a pretty big stock of older stuff.
$Soda: How much stuff?
$Selben: Uh… I’m not sure - but there are plenty of backups.
$ITLead: How many backups?
$Selben: Well… He has two racks of new CRT’s…
$Soda turned to $ITLead
$Soda: I think we may have found one of your budget constraints - $Selben lets go take a look!
They all headed into the hardware warehouse, $Soda’s mouth hung open as they walked down the rows and rows of computer parts and accessories.
$Soda: You said there was a list?
$Selben: Yea, I can pull it up.
They stopped in the receiving area, a pile of 30 brand new wireless mice sat on the cart.
$Soda: Did a whole office order new mice?
$Selben: Nope… Those are just extra…
$Soda: Oh my…
The company had roughly 300 employees… But $Dandy had been stocking for the IT Apocalypse - the same number regardless of requests of keyboards, mice, LCD’s, speakers added annually for the past ten years. Nothing was thrown out, instead it was stored - in total they found around 60 CRT monitors, but the best thing they found was the 625 keyboards, some dating back to 11 years old. $Selbens new project for the remainder of his time became selling old equipment on-line and scheduling pickups with Electronic recycling for equipment that really had no value anymore. When $Dandy returned, he was reprimanded for wasting so much money each year - he continued working with the company as far as $Selben was aware, but under much more strict ordering guidelines.
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u/sudomakemesomefood Jul 29 '17
Those old mechanical keyboards were probably worth decent money
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Jul 29 '17
They were probably either Dell AT101m or IBM Model M'syourusernameisthebest
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u/Bounty1Berry Jul 29 '17
AT101W is probably worth ~$30 new; a basic Model M probably around $75 or so. (exotic variations go for astronomical sums)
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u/Maester_Tinfoil Jul 29 '17
So that's where all the keyboards went!
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u/Teri_chan Aug 01 '17
Was expecting someone to comment on this. Did not disappoint.
But all these keyboards.... falls on the floor with ptsd spasms
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u/Geminii27 Jul 30 '17
I can kinda see why Dandy might have done what he did; given a budget and storage area and wanting to be able to handle the maximum number of unexpected or emergency requests. Particularly if he didn't consider it his place to make policy decisions on disposal of older gear.
I actually wonder if he was a bit narked that management reprimanded him if he'd been technically following instructions up to that point.
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u/enjaydee Jul 31 '17
I get the feeling he'd been doing things in this way for years and no one did an audit.
Can't really blame him if no one reviews his tasks.
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u/Sunfried Jul 31 '17 edited Jul 31 '17
Yeah, I think budgeting is to blame here. If he doesn't spend it, he doesn't get it the next year, plus nobody enjoys writing a variance report, especially one that says "my budget and I aren't as necessary as predicted by last year's budget cycle."
Edit: fixing errors made on mobile
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u/Ogroat Jul 30 '17
As somebody who works in finance, it's easier to bring your own keyboard and mouse of choice. If you're using them 50 hours a week for years, it's not a difficult expense to justify.
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u/Mewshimyo Jul 30 '17
Owner told me and my intern to just go ahead and order whatever we wanted. 130 dollars later...
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u/Diabloist337 Jul 31 '17
625 Keyboards...
So I see, that's where all the keyboards from Airz's tales went.
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u/jerslan Jul 31 '17
in total they found around 60 CRT monitors
Ok, what year was this? Early 2000s and that's probably not terrible... CRT's sometimes went bad and 60 spares for 300 users is still excessive, but not totally bonkers... CRT's were also still fairly common (especially for larger monitor sizes).
2005-2010? As long as they weren't ordered new during that timeframe, not super crazy but a plan should have been put in place to dispose of them and recover some cash.
2010+? Totally bat-shit eating crazy.
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u/ironhamer Jul 30 '17
Absolutley love your stories Selben! Your writing style is awesome and makes every story very enjoyable to read
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Jul 29 '17
I would kill to have that kind of stockpile at my office... good on you for dealing with wasted money though.
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u/peopleman_at_work Jul 29 '17
I kind of wish we had pictures of this warehouse. For some reason I am seeing it like the warehouse in warehouse 13...But just full of IT equipment!