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Old customer yelled at me for 'breaking' his printer - then I just unplugged the ethernet cable
I had this guy call me over to his small accounting office downtown about a year ago. He was furious saying his printer stopped working after I did some routine maintenance on his network. I mean I just swapped out a dying switch the week before. So I go over there and watch him try to print a report and it just sits there with a queue error. Turns out the printer was set to a static IP that got wiped when the switch died and the new one assigned a different DHCP address. I literally just unplugged the ethernet cable plugged it back into a different port and it grabbed the right IP. He didn't apologize or anything just kind of grunted and walked away. Has anyone else dealt with clients who blame you for network gremlins that were there before you touched anything?
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smith.nancy1mo ago
Clients love blaming tech for everything lol.
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charles6401mo ago
Friend of mine had a similar thing happen at a law firm. He was just replacing a dead monitor for a paralegal, didn't touch any cables or settings. Next day the whole floor can't print. He goes back and finds out the printer had been set up with a static IP that was also assigned to some other device on the network. The paralegal's old monitor had the IP reserved for a system that conflicted with the printer all along. Nobody yelled at him but the senior partner gave him this long sigh like he was the one who broke everything. He just went into the router and changed the reservation. Lawyers never thanked him either.
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Does no one ever think to check the basic stuff before calling, or is it just more fun to blame the guy who actually fixes things? I had a real estate agent once scream at me for "wiping his files" when all I did was swap a power strip for him. Turns out his "important documents" were saved to a local drive that had been failing for weeks, but somehow that was my fault too. Tech work is just being a scapegoat with a toolbelt half the time.
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