My team runs the IP Phone network for our company. I once got a call from a user telling me they could not answer their phone. I get into the phone system and give their phone a reset.
I had them verify that the phone did in fact reboot and they confirmed. I called her and they still stated they could not answer their phone. “No problem”, I said. “We’ll get you a new one right away”. Because this location is several hundred miles away from the main office where I work I had their local IT person replace their phone. After I reconfigure the phone I call the user back on their cell phone and ask if they can see the call come in and if they can now pick it up. They can see the call come in but say they cannot answer.
It finally comes out that they cannot answer because the option to answer does not even present itself. All right! There is the information I am looking for!
Odd that there would be 2 bad phones in a row, but maybe there is an issue with their switchport that is jacking up phones plug into it. I have the local IT guy change out the cable from her phone to the wall, go into a different wall jack, move it to a completely new switch and get her a new phone right out of the box. Same issue. We must be missing something here.
I ask the local IT guy to go to the user’s desk and see exactly what is happening because I am starting to expect the user is not telling me something.
The next day the local IT guy follows up with me via email that reads, “User is fixed. Replaced monitor”. What? Replaced their monitor? How does the monitor have anything to do with them not being able to answer the phone?
I give him a call and find out that the way the user answers the phone is to click “Answer” on the popup icon on their monitor when a call comes in. Monitor wouldn’t turn on so naturally pressing the damned ‘answer’ button on the freaking phone would have been impossible. Wait, no. That isn’t the case at all. Pressing the answer button on your phone is still a completely viable option to answering it. Maybe, “monitor is broken so I cannot click to answer” would have been a much better description?
[Picture Source: dok1 (CC)]
