Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I have worked in the field of technical support for many years and have had many calls which I consider to be worthy of this site.... but one that will always stick in my mind happened about 3 years ago when I was working for a certain fortune 500 company.

We sold a unit which had an all-in-one DSP card which controlled data, voice, sound, and music. It was the only expansion card and was mounted on a riser card which in turn was mounted onto the motherboard.

I recieved a call which went like this....

S: Thank you for calling Tech Support, what may I help you with?

EU: I just put this 'puter together and it won't do anything

S: Could you elaborate on that?

EU: I turn it on and it just flickers and then goes off

It took me about 20 minutes of troubleshooting before he started to reveal some clues...

EU: When they shipped it to me some parts were loose inside

I noticed the modem was laying in the bottom of the case.

S: Yeah, the card is on a riser and is held in place by a screw.

EU: There wasn't a screw in there so I stuck it back in myself and got it in real good.

I sat in horror as he explained how he removed the telephony card and the riser and stuck them back together...then he wrapped the card to the riser using scotch tape and jammed the riser card back into the motherboard which he reminded me was real hard with all that tape on it. When he turned the computer on for the first time the tape proceeded to melt all over the inside of the machine causing beep codes on bootup. Needless to say this was not covered by his warranty. He bought the machine in Utah from a Grain\Furniture\Computer store called Willy's.... I should have just hooked him right then.

I used to work fo a local secretarial college, and once in a while we would sell obsolete PCs to students.

One lady went away quite happily with an Amstrad 286 (!), but came back to tell us that, although it appeared to be working properly, it would emit a high pitched "beep beep" every ten to fifteen minutes. We talked through when this happened, and it turned out that it happened even when the computer was turned off. I couldn't fathom what could cause it, but I agreed to visit her to check it out.

When I arrived, the machine was on, and we sat down for a few minutes and sure enogh "beep beep". I shut the machine off, and ten minutes later, "beep beep". I looked around for anything alse which might be making the noise. Nothing. Ten minutes later, "beep beep". This time I looked UP - to see a smoke alarm, which was diligently beeping away to advise her that it's battery was dying!

She was suitably embarrassed. I didn't charge her.

When I was a rookie tech, I got this rather interesting call

I answered the phone and could instantly tell that this guy

was on his car phone. I could hear horns and traffic in the

background and the connection was filled with static.

Me: Technical Support, this is Mark, can I help you?

Caller: Yeah, I'm having trouble getting logged on and was

wondering if you could help me?

Me: Sure, could you describe what the problem is?

Caller: Well not at the moment. I'm on my car phone. This

problem occurred before I left for work

Me: Uh huh...So you're not at the computer?

Caller: No

Me: I see. Well, I'll be happy to give this a shot, but

normally we recommend to callers that they call us when

the problem is occurring or when they are sitting at the

actual machine

Caller: Yeah, yeah, I know but I'm in a hurry! Could you

just describe to me what I need to check in email to log on

right?

Me: (heaving a mental oh well sigh) Yes sir.

I was two minutes into describing how to configure Eudora

when all the sudden he interrupts with a "OH NO!"

Me: What??

Caller: Oh no! no! Don't ticket me! Don't ticket me! Awwww!

At this point the caller's voice reduced to whines and

groans. In the background, there was the unmistakable

WHEEE-OOO-OP! WHEEE-OOO-OP! of a police siren

Caller: Aw, @#$%^&*()!!...I'll have to call you back!

Me: Yes sir, have a nice day.

I hung up, wondering how the guy was going to explain to

to the officer that he was trying to configure his email.

Last year we moved buildings and we had to re-allocate our

PCs. I gave a new user her PC and she then complained that

the mouse was not working. I went upstairs to her only to

find that she was waving the mouse in the air as if it

were a pointing device.

Later in the year our Chief Exec called us with a problem.

He said. "This mouse is broken. It's not like the one I've

got at home. The one I have at home, when you push it to

the right the pointer goes to the right, and when you push

it to the left the pointer goes to the left and I'm sure the

lead comes out of the top of the mouse"

Chief Execs Huh!

I work for a company that inspects businesses across the

country for worker's compensation purposes. Our inspectors

have territories that they cover and they carry laptops with

them. They use these laptops to perform the inspections and

to dial in to the home server to check their e-mail.

One day I received a call from an inspector saying that his

modem was not working and he could not dial in. I proceded

to walk him through a couple of things to check the settings

in the system.

After performing a couple of basic checks I wanted to have

him bring up the terminal program in Windows 3.1. To find

out if he had another application open I asked him if he was

in Program Manager.

To this he replied, "No, I am an inspector."

The PC support group at a university got a call from

one of the faculty who complained that her PC was not

working. It went something like:

"It doesn't work"

"Does it have power"

"I can't tell"

"are there any lights on"

"No"

"Please check that the power cord is plugged into the wall"

"I can't"

"Why not?"

"the power is out in my building and it is too dark"

Some years ago I was working with a firm that was putting in PCs for the first time. The application support manager anticipated many of the common questions she would receive from new users and prepared a user's manual that provided step-by-step instructions on how to work through some common problems.

One day she received a call from a secretary complaining that she could not find the "do and don't" section in the manual. There was no such section in the manual so the support manager went to the secretary's desk to find out what gave her this idea. Once there, the secretary showed her a step in one of the procedures in the user manual that stated "if the above does not work, go to DOS"

A customer had called asking for support and the supporter asked:

Well, in which environment are you working in?

And he received an angry and awesome answer:

In the kitchen....

On a trade show in Sao Paulo, Brazil, somes 3 years ago,

people were buying color disks to work with color printers.

Here's a copy of an email that went out to about 150 Techs.

The poor lady that sent it out was the butt of jokes for weeks.

I felt bad for her while I explained it to her.

sorry to send this to staff -

but I need to copy a power point presentation (soon) to a disc

and my disc holds 1.44 and the presentatin is 1.78 -

getting error msg "insert higher capacity disk" -

does anyone have one i can have/buy/borrow???

Years ago, I worked for a company that developed a custom financial application

for its customers.

The product needed to support check printing, so we developed a layout module that

allowed the user to define fields on the check and attach data or static text to the fields.

The fields were defined by using some pre-defined tags to indicate the position of

check date, payee, amount, etc.

One day we get a call from a user who said she was having a problem understanding the "dd/mm/yy" tag.

When we asked her what she didn't understand, she said "well... I know the first part of the tag means

debit-debit money-money, but what's the yy?"

My favorite story from my time as an Apple Technical Lead was this one:

I received a call from a frantic woman asking me to tell her how

to hook up her new computer. However, there was so much background noise that

I could barely hear her over it.

So I asked her, "Miss, do you think you could turn down your TV, because I'm having

trouble understanding you."

"It's not my TV - I'm at the airport", she replied.

"You're setting up your computer at the airport - do you work there?", I asked.

"No, just traveling" she replied.

"Well maybe waiting until you get home to set it up is a better idea.",

I offered helpfully. "It might be a little more relaxing and easier to communicate.

And don't worry, your warranty is good anywhere you travel."

I'm also racking my brain, trying to see why she's even attempting this in an airport.

"Look, they won't let me on the plane with it, okay?

Security thinks it's a bomb, and I have to power it on to prove to them it isn't."

I had to laugh.

The call took about a half an hour (she was shouting my instructions from a pay phone to her husband, who was about 50 feet away from her at the security checkpoint),

but finally we booted up without blowing anything up - and she was so happy about it,

she even wrote a glowing thank you letter about me to the company.

I received a call from a co-worker stating that one of his workers was experiencing

some computer problems and wanted to know if I could help.

He said that he was "getting some sort of message about a sector not found."

The boss had instructed his worker to run DEBUG to get rid of the problems.

("We are, after all, trying to debug this problem.")

I calmly informed him that that was not the proper thing to do.

He said that was what he did to take care of the problem last time.

I had the worked exit DEBUG and then try to run SCANDISK.

This version of DOS didn't have SCANDISK so I had him try CHKDSK.

While it was running he told me that he had instructed the worker

to selectively purge files from the computer using DELTREE, eliminating the applications

directory and all of its subdirectories He then had him defragment the hard drive.

He wanted to know why the program wouldn't work at all!

Some of the most difficult tech calls are from branch

offices, because you cannot go to the person's office and

see what's going on. Here's an example of one such

baffling call:

Caller: I can't access my b: drive.

Tech: What application are you in?

Caller: I'm in WordPerfect.

Tech: Have you clicked on File, Open, and then scrolled

up to find your b: drive?

Caller: Yes, but it's not showing.

Tech: Well, you need to scroll all the way up to the top,

where you see Desktop, then My Computer, and then the a:

drive, and you should see your b: drive there.

Caller: I did that.

After a long series of questions that did not reveal any

more information, I could only think of one more question

to ask.

Tech: On the front of your computer, how many floppy

drives do you have?

Caller: One.

This is not a first person story, but rather about a friend of mine that was a computer Field Engineer (FE).

Back in the old days, FEs installed and maintained all computer hardware, on-site, and in person.

During the conversion from the old mechanical accounting machines to the electronic accounting machines (long before personal computers) my friend was dispatched to a small “one accountant” office to install their first “computer”. The “programming” had been done, tested, approved, and the staff had been trained. It was just a matter of replacing the mechanical equipment with the electronic “computer” accounting machine.

Once installed, the FE asked the accountant to check out the new equipment. They inserted the paper journal (that is how it used to work) and entered a transaction. The results were calculated and immediately printed along with a prompt for the next transaction.

The accountant acknowledged that the results were correct but the machine was going too fast and they did not think that was the way it was supposed to work. The FE (with tongue planted firmly in his cheek) said that was no problem, he would slow it down just a little. He unplugged the machine, tied a knot in the power cord and plugged it back into the wall. He asked the accountant to try it one more time. They did and said it was much better.

Back then, FEs not only installed the equipment, they also did periodic preventive maintenance. Three months later, the FE returned for the first maintenance call.

He found:

a. The power cord knotted to a length of about one foot.

b. A twenty five foot extension cord attached and knotted to a length of about three feet.

c. An absolutely delighted accountant who proclaimed "I love this system, it is now operating at just the right speed!!!!"

The FE smiled, changed the printer ribbon,

cleaned the appropriate mechanical areas, and said he would be back in

three months.

Anybody out there yearn for technical solutions like that?????

At my previous job, I was contracted out as a PC Support

Technician to a major defense contractor. One day I recieved

a trouble-ticket about a CD stuck in a CD-ROM drive and they needed

to have it out by one o'clock because someone else needed it. I called

the extention of the user but got no answer.

I immediately

went to the helpdesk and they told me what department the user

was in. I went there immediately (again being the great defender

of automation-assisted productivity) and found that all of the

users were out to lunch. I began to seek out the workstation

that had a CD-ROM drive. After checking them all twice and

having found not a single CD-ROM drive, I decided to wait

for the return of a user that could help.

The first to return

was very excited to see me and asked if I had gotten the CD

out of the computer. When I told him that there were no

CD-ROM drives in the department he responded confidently that

there was and lead me to the machine...no CD-ROM drive, just

3 1/2" and 5 1/4" drives. The user swore that the CD was

in there and that he had not put it in the 5 1/4" drive.

I checked the drive and indeed found no CD.

At the

persistance of the user, I removed the cover from the

computer...no CD. I set the computer on it's side to have

a better look and found the hiding CD, peeking out between

the two drives! The user had assumed the crack between the

3 1/2" and 5 1/2" drives was the CD-ROM drive!

Working as a Network Systems Administrator for a large communications company,

I ran into several individuals that knew little to none about computers.

One such individual called me over because she was having a problem with her system

not resetting properly. I tried to pry out additional information on the problem

but to no avail.

As I arrived at the location, the individual stated that the problem

still exists and is causing her much grief. I asked for a "demo" of the problem to gain

better access to an overall solution.

As she was pressing the monitor Power Switch on

and off, she clearly stated: "Every time I press this reset switch, the system never

changes the data and always ends up in the same spot! - See, I reset the thing and this same blinking cursor is here!"

Needless to say, the problem was quickly remedied!