Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I work at a big ISP. Just had the following call:

"Hi. I'm new on the net. Listen, on my modem, do I need the cable plugged into PHONE or LINE?"

"Line."

"*pause* Which end of the cable should go in that plug?"

"The only end that fits."

"Oh. Hang on, I'll try it. *pause* Right, what do I do with the other end of the cable?"

"Plug it into a phone jack."

"Okay, and will that be all I need to do to get on the net?"

"Have you followed thru our installation CD and manual?"

"Um..no.. Do I do that with you on the phone?"

"Madame, all you need to do is follow the manual that came with the CD"

"So you can't help me?"

"Well, you're not having any technical difficulty, you just need to follow through the installation process".

"Oh. Bye!"

Tech: thank you for calling *BIG CORPORATION* how can I help you?

Elderly woman: I wanna play Wheel of Fortune,how do I do it?

T: Well, since your computer didn't come with that software ma'am, I can't really help too much, but I'll see what I can do. Ok, have you ever had it working?

EW: Yes, this man set it up for me.

T: Oh, well, do you have an Icon for it on your desktop?

EW: No. I have do "start" or something.

T: Oh...ok, go ahead and click on the Start Button.

EW: Alright...how do I do that?

T:Click the button on the left side of the mouse on the word START in the lower left-hand corner.

EW:Ok, I did it.

T:Now go up to programs.

EW:I don't see any "Programs"

T:Well, what DO you see?

EW:All I see is Open, Explore, and Find Virus?

T:What? Oh...try clicking with the LEFT button...where your index finger is.

EW:I AM! I'm clicking on the left button. Now it's scanning viruses or something. What did you make me do! Is it broke?

T:No ma'am. Click "OK" when that is done.

EW:I can't! Oh, I got it.

T:Ok, now, LEFT CLICK ON THE START BUTTON.

EW:Find Virus AGAIN!

T:ok...Ma'am...please listen...look at the mouse. Do you see the two buttons? Well, Click the BIG one on the left.

EW:My big button is on the right!

T:where is the cord? on the top or bottom?

EW:Bottom.

T:Ma'am, plese turn the mouse around.

EW:oh, that's better, it was moving funny before.

T:OK, well, I think you will have better luck finding it now. (quickly had her open and run the program)

EW:oh, what if I can't find it again?

T:Didn't you say you had a gentleman help set it up for you? Maybe your friend could help you out.

EW: Oh, he wasn't a friend...that man charged me a $100!

You can shorten this if you like...but, that's pretty much how it happened. That was one of my recent tales...I've had many in the past...but, I forget a lot of them.

Thanks,

Jeremy from Sony Tech Support

I used to work as an office junior for a large retail firm.

This large retail firm had an M.I.S Dept, which included

several skinny, tanless, caffine & nicotine enriched beings

known as help desk surport. In the two and a bit years i worked

for the company I managed to scrounge bits and pieces to put

togther a 486 sx 25. As an office junior and not versed in the

exact internal workings of a P.C I was thwart with problems and

faced with having to ask advice of those souls teatering on

the edge of insanity. Techies paid to answer peoples question

normally have there fun but as it would be a FAVOUR to help me

it seemed to make them more MEAN and CRUEL HARTED.

The first problem i encountered was with writing an Autoexec.

I asked Pete, "Why won't this work"?

He said simply, "It is probably the PEBKAC".

Not willing to look ignorant, i acted as though I knew

what he was on about then went home and hit the books. Unfortunatley

I was unable to find any reference to 'PEBKAC' although I did find

information i needed for my Autoexec. But as other problems

arised I was again forced to seek help. Time and time again

he told me the same thing. "Because of the PEBKAC"

It got to the point where i was ripping my hair out trying to figure out why

several of my drivers and most of my systems files where in-operable

but no-where could i find the damn PEBKAC.

One day though, as i came out of the lift looking VERY stressed

i confided in one of the less knowledgeable, therefore less

Bureacratic techies.

Stressed teen: "What is this damn PEBKAC"?

Techie: "Oh thats a term we use when we can't be bothered answering

someones questions either because we don't like them or because the problem

was their fault."

Stressed teen: "Great, but what does it mean"?

Techie: "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"

Stressed teen: "Those Techie Bastards!"

Two of us work tech support for a software company. Kyle also works a second job at a software store. I was visiting him at the store one afternoon and in through the door walks the family from hell. Right out of the movie "Deliverence".

Dad: I was just over at that 'thar computer store and they told me that with the right software I could use the Packard Bell computer to break into the White House computer. Do you have that software here?

His son, the computer expert of the family, is standing behind dad grinning from ear to ear.

Kyle: No, I'm afraid we don't have any software to break into the White House.

Dad: Oh. How about some to read my checks, then.

Kyle: Huh?

Dad: You know, when I put my cancelled checks into the computer.

Kyle: You mean to do your bookeeping on? We have programs for that.

Dad: No, the one that reads my cancelled checks when I put them into the computer.

We all walk over to the computer Kyle plays with. Kyle and I are trying very hard not to laugh, but can't help wondering if the whole families IQ reaches two digits.

Kyle: Tell me where you are supposed to put the checks.

Dad: Right here. (Points to the area between the number keys and the first row of letters).

Kyle: They told you that you could do this?

Dad: Yah, I just want to slide the cancelled check in and it takes care of balancing the checkbook. They said the computer could do that and get into the White House computer and the IRS and the bank. I need to see if you have the software to do that. (His son is about to drool at the thought of "breaking in" to a computer system.

After they left, we called the computer store and asked the salesman what was going on.

Sales: The guy came in and said he wanted a computer to do the described things. I told him it was illegal, but possible with the right software. I told him that he had to enter his cancelled checks on the keyboard to get the program to balance his checkbook.

We had a very long laugh at what was assumed by the buyer. Some times we stop laughing because we are very scared that there are people out there like that.

I have two short incidents to mention...

I was in line at BestBuy, buing some CD I think, when a family stood behind me. The mother was a large woman, mean looking (keep in mind), the husband was a whimpy looking guy, and the daughter was young but didn't look to bright either. I stood there silently and listened to their conversation...

Daughter askes "Mom, what's this?" as she points to a nicely wrapped box containing a copy of Microsoft Office 97 Pro.

The mom looks at it from a distance and then walks over to look at it in person. She picks the box up, and after reading it for a minute or so, says (in a rather LOUD voice) "Oh, this is that new Microsoft 97, but I'm not paying $400 for it!!! We already have Microsoft 95!"

She walks back and mentions the big price to her husband who asks dumbly "We's got them Windows already, right?"

The mom answers, showing computer knowledge and superiority, "Yeah, we don't need the 97, it's the same thing, 'xcept it's got more stuff, that's all."

At this point I wanted to turn around and let her know that Office 97 indeed was NOT an operating system, but I decided not to :)

The second thing happend also in best buy. I was looking around for a Sony 17" 200PS series monitor, and only found a 200ES sitting on the shelf along with some other models. At that time I haven't read much about either model, so I decided to ask a computer tech who was positioned behind a desk containing lots of network adapters, motherboards, and other "technical" equipment that obviously required technical knowledge to sell... or so I thought. The tech was more than happy to follow me and I pointed to the monitor. I asked him what was the difference bettween it and the 200PS that they did not carry. The tech looked at the monitor closely, then at the one next to it, looked behind it, underneath it, and then said (pointing at the 200GS model next to it) "Well, this one has a shorter tube" I looked at him in confusion, and proceeded to mention that the 200GS also has built in speakers, (which took the guy by surprise), but that was not what I was asking. I then asked him, again, about the 200PS and how it differed from the ES. The tech looked at the monitors in front of him and replied "I don't know.." I thanked him and decided to get the answers on my own. How DO they ever get those jobs??

Actual question from customer in support email:

Do I have to open another account to send a fax ? If not how do I send a fax

through my build-in fax machine.

I wish I responded with:

Yes, you need to open a fax-only account - fax in your $20 and we will handle

the rest for you, and fax you the instructions on how to receive/send a fax.

But I responded that he needs to contact the vendor that provided him with

the fax machine/modem.

- Scott A. STeinbrink

Well lets see if I can tell any new _truthful_ tales in my

days as a tech support person for an ISP... we've all heard

the Urban Legends about the cd turned cup holders and more

but the beauty of these experiences are the simplicity...

and the reality...

The Black Screen:

Me: Go to Start, Programs, and then MSDOS prompt.

User: Okay

Me: Do you see the cursor there?

User: No, the cursor went away.

Me: What do you see?

User: This big black box opend on the screen, it says

"C:\Windows"

Me (realizing the user was talking about the mouse

pointer): type echo atdt)com2

User: Where? On the black screen?

Me: Yes...

More is better:

One time I had a customer call in who had 14 copies

the same modem installed in the Modems portion of

the control panel... pretty bad except when you consider

the caller who actaully HAD three modems installed in his

computer!

Oldie but goodie:

Me: How much memory does your computer have?

User: 210MB.

Me: No, thats your hard drive space, how much memory???

Out of Space:

Who hasn't gotten this one?

User: I got an error message (installing, downloading,ect)

this file that says my computer has run out of space.

Me: Okay, go to DOS prompt (no better way to show your

superiority to the users then to dazzle em with "the black

screen") and type "dir". How much free space do you have?

User: It says (less than a meg).

Me: Well you're going to have to delete some files.

User: Well which ones?

(sigh)

And of course the classics:

User: "I can't double click." ( at least Micro$oft made

our hells a little less painful with the right click and

open commands with this one...)

User, after sucessfully getting connected to the net:

"Now what?"

User: "So now I'm on AOL?"

And one last one... a frightningly true story that, as

usual, happened to a co-worker, but I was there...

We Don't Need No Stinking Protection:

User: My disk are always going bad... why don't you

guys make more reliable disks?

Tech: Well what do you do with the disks after you get

them?

User: Well, I take em out of the envelope, remove that

metal thing thats in the way...

Tech: The metal thing? The slidding door?

User: Yeah... Is that supposed to be on there?

Well, the job may be frustrating, but it sure is funny at

times... almost as funny as when I used to work in a

hardware store and all the wives used to come in and

timidly ask if I had "brass nipples" and "wire nuts."

What a world. :)

My name is Anthony and I work in a local college as a Lab Supervisor.

Well anyway, I was sitting in the classroom one day and this guy came into the lab and asked if he would be able to get his email through the computers. So I said to him "Sure ". Then I added as long as it's not "Hotmail, because the school has put a resriction against it" So he looks at me with this puzzled look on his face and says "why? Does it set the computer on fire". With is very serious look on his face. I did not know what to say all I wanted to do was laugh, but I could not laugh in his face. So I just said "No nothing like that will happen" and I ran to the bathroom to let out my laugh.

TECH: TECH SUPPORT. HOW MAY I HELP YOU, TODAY?

EU: I HAVE JUST A SIMPLE QUESTION.

TECH: THAT'S WHAT WE ARE HERE FOR, SIR.

EU: I'M MOVING AND I LIKE KNOW. IF I UNPLUG THE MY

COMPUTER, WOULD I LOSE EVERYTHING ON MY COMPUTER?

TECH: NO, SIR. IT'S PERFECTLY SAFE TO UNPLUG THE SYSTEM.

EVERYTHIMNG WOULD STILL BE THERE.

I work at an Internet service Provider in TN. A lady called up one day and said:

"I'd like to sign up for your Internet service"

"Ok let me tell you a little about us"

I went through the whole sales pitch etc.

As I was finishing up, I said "we will use the dial-up software that comes with Windows 95"

"Windows 95?" she replied.

"yes or do you have 3.1? We can send you some software for it"

"Windows 3.1? I don't have Windows."

"What operating system are you running under?"

"Operating system? What's that?"

"The software that allows your computer to function."

"I don't have a computer."

"Oh, well, you must have a computer to get Internet service ma'am."

"Oh...OK thanks for your time."

I work for a local ISP doing tech support. This older lady

had called our customer service department to get info on

our pricing, etc.

Customer support calls me and says they're going to transfer

this lady over to me because she had "technical questions"

that they couldn't answer.

I get on the phone and here's what happens after I answer

all the basic "Internet newbie" questions.

Me: Okay ma'am, would you like us to sign you up today?

Her: Oh no, I only have one phone line right now. US West

won't be here to install my other line until next week.

Me: Well, if you would like to get on the Internet sooner,

you can just use your one phone line until the second

one is installed.

Her: But I don't want my normal phone line to get all clogged

up.

Me: Excuse me ma'am?

She went on to explain to me what she meant. She believed that

if someone sent her email and she was not online, the email message

would just sit on her phone line until she logged on to get it. She didn't

want her friends calling her and getting a busy signal instead of her answering

machine because of email clogging up her phone line. :)

I had to explain the email sits on our server until she logs in

to get it...(sigh)

Here's a few I have gotten over the past year of working in

the tech support department for a local ISP.

Me: Okay, I need you to double click on Make New Connection,

where it says "Type in a name for the computer you are

dialing" type in (company name)

Him: Wow, you can see what's on my screen from there? This

Internet stuff is pretty amazing, isn't it?

############################

We have a user here that is the typical "dirty old man". He is about 60 years old.

Unfortunately,he will ONLY talk to me. If I am not at work during that shift, he will

leave messages for only ME to call him back. BTW, I am a female. :)

Me: What's the problem tonight Wallace?

Him: Well, I uploaded my web site to the server, but I don't see it

there. Can you go take a look at it and see if it's correct?

Me: Well, I'm at your site now. You just need to name your main web

page INDEX.HTML and it will load it automatically.

Him: Hey, are there graphics files listed there?

Me: Uh-huh, 1.jpg, 2.jpg and so on

Him: Take a look at them so you can get an idea of who you're talking to.

It's pictures of me.

Me: Uh, okay.

I opened up one of the pictures in Netscape and was thoroughly disgusted. Here

was a picture of this 60 year old man COMPLETELY naked, holding his...you know...

in his hand and smiling for the camera.

Me: Uhm, Wallace, I really shouldn't look at pictures like that on the web. My boss

might look in my cache and I could get into trouble. (Of course my boss never does that

but I couldn't say, "I just got sick because of that gross picture")

Him: Okay, honey. I don't want to get you in trouble. But did you ever see one that big before?

Needless to say, I told my boss and now my boss takes all his calls. I won't talk to him anymore.

#####################

Me: What Operating System are you using?

Her: Netscape

Me: No, what operating system, not what web browser

Her: Oh, Endora (Meaning Eudora)

Me: Ma'am, is it Windows 3.1, Win 95, NT, Mac?

Her: I don't know

Me: Is there anyone there that knows or could help you find out?

Her: Can't we just go through the setup for each "operating

system" until we get the right one?

#####################

Thanks for letting my vent my frustrations on your site! It's good

to know I'm not alone! :)

A: Tech Support, can I help you...

B: Yes, first of all I don't know much about computers.

A: That mustn't be a problem

B: Okay... well ehm... I want to install my computer again

A: On which platform are you working?

B: Platform?

A: ..hm... Are you working with Windows?

B: YES!! That's a thing I know. But I need to re-install it.

A: Let's start off... could you put the CD in the CD-ROM

B: I have that shining silver thing here... but it doesn't fit...

A: You don't have a CD-ROM player?

B: Is that were you put in those plastic square discs?

A: No... it is the thing which comes out

B: I don't have such...

A: ..hm... let's see... You don't have an opening in the front then?

B: No, not at all

A: If you press some sort of button on front of the computer, does there come a tray out?

B: ooohhh.... You mean the coffee-cup-holder

I work in a call centre for a large ISP and recently had

a call from an extremely irate customer. It seems he had

been trying to install the ISP's free software and had got

an error. He explained that he had called in and spoken to

one of our other techs and had been told that he was

running low on Hard Drive space. The tech took him through

deleting "a folder", and now his computer wouldn't start.

It was getting close to home-time, and I could see my

weekend getting further and further away. Cursing the

unknown tech, I settled down to see what we could do to

patch up his system.

After about 45 minutes of getting nowhere fast, the caller

mentioned (in passing) that he had decided to clear even

more space after talking to the last tech, just in case it

wasn't enough.

With that feeling of exhaustion and dread you learn very

early on in the job, I asked "What else did you delete?"

Caller: "Oh. Nothing."

"So, how did you save more space?" I asked.

He replied, "I tried moving my Windows folder to my second

Hard Drive."

(Blink) "But didn't it come up with a message telling you

it couldn't do that?"

"Yes, it did. But I managed to get around that by doing it

from DOS."

This story about my buddy who used to work in tech support for a major ISP. I still work there. Here is the story why my buddy was fired.

Tech: Thank you for calling (&*^$^&#^%$&*), this is John, can I help you?

Caller: I'm new at this...My screen froze, my mouse does not move anymore.... How can I get out of it?

Tech: Lets see... Just press ctrl-alt-del once.

Caller: I JUST TOLD YOU I CANNOT MOVE MY MOUSE AND MY SCREEN FROZE

Tech: I understand. The ctrl-alt-del are actually on the keyboard.

Caller: Nothing happens.

Tech: Let's reset the computer.

Caller: How do I do that?

Tech: OK...Just turn it off. Count till 5 and turn it back on.

Caller: It's doing something...It's thinking. Why did all this happen?

Tech: Do you have a cat in the house?

Caller: Yes!!!!

Tech: What happens is that your mouse gets scared of the cat and freezes. To fix it you can lock your cat in the bathroom and after put a piece of cheese in front of your mouse so it will move forward!!!

Caller: Really?

P.S) AGENT WAS FIRED DUE TO QUALITY ASSURANCE DEPARTMENT MONITORING THIS CALL)

4th Level manager calls in from New York City on Christmas

to the help desk in Poughkeepsie to report that his laptop was

stolen he had left a 7500$ thinkpad on the seat of his car in NYC

with the window open and wants the help desk to call 911...

A women called me telling me she got a computer from the school where she works for the summer and she wanted to get connected to the Internet so I went to her house and she said she called the ISP and they send her all the information she needed (username, password, etc) and a small 3-4 pages installation manual. She said she tryed to do what the manual said but it didn't work. I sit at the desk and I see no control panel, so I decide to go in Dialup Networking and install the modem from there I begin the installation, but no modems found. I take a look at the back of the computer and I looked for the phone cable and see it is connected in the RJ-45 port of the Ethernet card.

So I told her there were no modem in her computer and she needed one to get connected to the Internet

I work for a company that builds PC's... we got this call from a customer who bought a PC from us recently... complaining his soundcard didn't work. The call was passed on to me, because I built his PC.

Tec: Hello sir, I understand you're having problems with your soundcard.

Cust: Yes, it hasn't worked since I got it.

Tec: OK, is there a little speaker icon in the bottom right hand corner of the taskbar? (I knew that the souncard worked when it went out... I'd built it.)

Cust: Oh, yes there is.

Tec: OK, could you double-click it and check the volume levels?

Cust: They're all about half way up, apart from the one on the left which is right up.

Tec: Ok sir.. (wondering if he'd actually asked it to play anything) Could you open up media player? (Proceeds to tell the customer where media player is, and tells him to open a midi up)

Tec: If you'd press the "play" button now sir...

Cust: "play" button? there isn't one.

Tec: (thinks for a second) The little arrow in the bottom left.

Cust: Oh, OK. There's no sound.

Tec: Right.. Could you check that your speakers are plugged into the right jack in the back please?

Cust: Right (sounds of scuffling) Yes, it's plugged into the socket crearly marked "speaker".

Tec: (now getting confused) Right... go into control panel, and go into system.

(instructs him to look and see if anything is conflicting... no joy.. Then instructs him to remove his soundcard, shut down his PC. Soundcard is then found by windows and re-installed when it reboots.)

Tec: Any sound?

Cust: Nope.

Tec: Hmm... Could you play the media player again?

(customer opens it up, plays midi.)

Cust: Still no sound (sounding a little fed up)...

Tec: (sudden thought) Right sir, while it's playing, could you go behind your PC and unplug your speakers, and plug them into any other sockets you have that it looks like the speaker jack may fit into.

Cust: OK..

(customer puts handset down.. I proceed to hear scrabbling, and the sounds of things being unplugged. This continues for a moment.. then suddenly Beethoven's Fur Elise blasts out.. a startled whoa from customer.. frantic clicking to shut the noise up)

Cust: It works now.

Tec: .... (having realised what was going on)

Cust: There were three plugs above where I had it plugged in, I tried them and it worked!

Tec: Yes sir, you had your speakers plugged into your MODEM speaker outlet. (holding head)

Cust: Oh.. sorry about that. (sounding sheepish)

Tec: OK sir... no problem, it's an easy mistake to make.

Cust: OK.. see you.

Tec: All right sir, take care. (puts phone down bursts into laughter)

A couple years ago when I was still in high school and in

English III, my school's librarian appeared at the door.

She and my English teacher huddled for a bit, then I was

called over and sent with her down to the library to fix the

two computers there that had been misbehaving. On the way

back I was informed by said librarian that she had "purchased"

my services from my English teacher for 10 copies!

I had a slightly flustered IT manager come in and ask me if I could please see a user urgently to fix her PC. It was newly installed and one week later no longer booted up was the report.

This person wrote papers for a member of parliament, so rather than approach a lowly tech see launched off with complaints to senior management about how this kind of problem was unacceptable.

I hurried up and booted up the PC. It bleeped and blipped away fine, hard drive access running just like I expected. I looked at the screen, power was on and its all connected up. Turned up the brightness and contrast and Ta Da!

We have life.

Turns out she had annoyed her work collegue by her badgering behaviour so he'd turned down her screen to show her she wasn't so smart. I wonder how she felt explaining the outcome to senior management, especially as I had to report what I'd done.

Another nice little tale:

Whilst working around an office I noticed some users casually talking, leaning in there desks. About 1 hour later I receive a call saying the PC is stuffed as it keeps cutting out and rebooting.

Having had a frantic day I was not about to be to co-opeartive.....

Me: You've been working really hard today haven't you?

User: aahhh, yeah

Me: really?

User: yeah, kind of...., what do you mean?

Me: well I saw you leaning on your PC talking earlier.

User : yeah?

Me: well you shouldn't lean on it so much as your pushing the power cable out of the back, pull it away form the wall and plug it in properly.

User: ....ahh, cheers, that worked bye, 'click'.

But wait there's still more:

A power crisis in Auckland lead us to use laptops to circumvent soem of the problems we faced. A senior managers meeting about the crisis was held, and as my boss was away I was hauled before the commitee.

Complaints were levelled that they felt they were to reliant on IT and the gear wasn't up to the job.

I querried this and asked, just what equipment?

Manager: The laptops, they're no good.

Me: which ones?

Manager: the one I sent back to you.

Me: Ah, that was a minor problem that I fixed within a few minutes of receiving it.

Manager: Thats not good enough, what went wrong?

Me: Its best to say it was simply resolved (trying to be tactful, this is afterall my bosses boss and answer only to the CEO).

Manager: So what was it?

Me: Well I plugged it in and it want, you had run the battery so low it wouldn't power up anymore......(how did they miss the low battery warnings beeping away?)

A few years back my father, an expert DOS user, reluctantly took to using Windows 3.11. One night I got this strange message that his desktop had "disappeared" and all he use left with was "Chess". As the call was being conducted from a call box (my end) I offered to stop by on my way home to investigate his problem. Arrived, one look at his screen, a double-click with the mouse on the minimized chess icon, a cup of coffee and I headed on home.

I worked at a technical school a few years back. The

receptionist at the front desk was complaining about her

computer taking to much desk space. The computer was in a

full size AT style case. I suggested that the PC be moved

off of the desk and placed on the floor on its side making a

large amount of space available. She stared at me with a

blind look of sheer terror and replied "If you do that the

bits will fall off the disk and pile up at the bottom."

Needless to say the computer was never moved.

Back in my University days, I did hardware support

for pretty much the whole campus. One afternoon I was

sitting around Hoping that the phone wouldnt ring when it did.

me: Hello, info tech department

user: Hello, I have a big problem with this computer my

department got me.

me: what kind of computer is it, and whats the problem?

user: Its a power mac, the footpedal is broken

me: dont touch anything I am on my way over. (I had to see this in person)

She had set everything up herself, well as far a plugging stuff in.

When it came time to turn it on she started stepping on the mouse

like it was a foot pedal for a sewing machine. Eventually

she must have gotten pretty frustrated, the mouse was in bits.

One afternoon, after having some really poor connections into my ISP from home, I contacted technical support to verify my settings.

(A little background, I am an A+ certified technician with several years experience). The conversation went as follows:

Me: I keep getting disconnected after about 2 minutes, I've called the phone company to check the line, checked to make sure the modem is fully seated, the phone line is secure at both the wall and the modem, MTU and RWIN match the ISP's recommended settings, the comm port speed, and made sure that the modem and mouse don't share a comm port/IRQ (no matter, I use a PS/2 mouse, just using my checklist) and had no conflicts. Only thing I can think of is winsock32.dll is hosed, what's the newest version?

Tech Help: You don't need winsock for a dial up connection.

Glad to know that my monthly payment is going for a good cause...hopefully some OJT.

I had a user who was having a keyboard problem with her

computer so she was using a co-workers computer for the

time being. When I showed up, she was on the phone with

another help desk trying to get her passwords straightened

out so she could log into his computer. I overheard her on

the phone after they got all the passwords setup asking why

her desktop and icons didn't show up on the computer when

she logged in. She didn't realize that they were local to

each computer.

Two related tales which occurred within days of each other.

A Mac owner was given a printer including the cable.

However, it was a PC compatable parallel printer.

The cable fit nicely in the SCSI socket on the back of

the Mac but severely compromised the Mac's ability to use

the SCSI hard drive. Removing the cable returned the Mac

operating condition.

A college student unplugged all the cables of her Mac and

put it in a box to take home between semesters.

When reassembled, it wouldn't boot.

When I examined it I saw the modem cable leaving the second

serial port and entering the SCSI port.

The cable fit nicely in the SCSI socket on the back of

the Mac but severely compromised the Mac's ability to use

the SCSI hard drive. Removing the cable returned the Mac

operating condition.

Not as humourous as other tales but an odd synchroicity.

Why are some users Allways right?.... - Im based in a country in the east

and the primary language for most people is NOT english! - Imagine the results....

"To see the messages that I want to print, I have to make up a message, type in my special

code, and then I can See all of my stuff in modify mode - why isnt it working?"

Me ... What???

"Hi, Hi.....My f11, and f12 keys have just stopped working"

Turns out that what was missing from that was - Ive just re - installed a new version of windows

(cantoneese), and my f11 (DOH!)

Best one though:-

User - Hi, theres Smoke comming out of the back of my computer

Ts - Ok, You need to unplug the unit and call the fire department

User - No, No I have a friend who sayd that there is an undocumented

dos command called Nosmoke.com, and all I have to do Is run that

Ts - Oh, right, right...you need to call microsoft

User (calls back later) - Id like to book an engineer - I spoke to microsoft, and they told me that my version of

dos was incompatable with the no - smoke command

!!!! - Its nice when Teccies stick together!!

I work as the tech support manager for a local ISP.

We received a call that one woman was being disconnected every two or three minutes, so I rang her back to find out what was up.

She answered and with a sheepish tone told me that she had figured out what her problem was. Seems her cat had been yanking out her phone cord every couple of minutes. Snickering, I suggested that maybe she should keep a closer eye on her wildlife; perhaps too embarrassed to speak up for herself, she humbly agreed and hung up.

Sheesh....

Even a tech can do stupid things. I was working on a user's

machine and borrowed the ethernet adapter off of my computer

so I could get the user's computer on the network. Then, while

on the user's computer I tried to connect (over the network)

to my computer. It took a few minutes before another tech

told me I should plug my machine back into the network.

Where I work, they have gone through a lot of downsizing recently. In my programming department, I monitor the dev support line, where people call in for various programming issues or to see if our cola machine still has Mountain Dew.

Several months ago, someone in upper management gained an extra bonus check by combining local ops (the guys who work on employee's computers) with the dev team, and made a lot of the programmers "take up the slack" for the ops people. This may not have been neccessary, but they laid off something like 75% of the ops before the move. Also, they haven't offered raises for the dev people in three years, and they are quitting in droves. The dev people left now have to program the clients as well as fix employee computers. Employees are using Windows 95, and the dev team are pretty much Unix experts, and are pretty socially inept anyway. Things, as you can see, are going to hell.

Last week, the head of the dev team quit, cashed in his remaining stock, and has since relocated to Borneo. The new head of this dev/ops department has decided to institute the ops philosophy to dev. Some of his gems are:

"The Beta Test team has been very negative about our recent releases, and thus, the program has performed poorly against our competetors. Unless the Beta team develops a more positive and less nit-picking attitude towards the clients, I am afraid it will reflect badly come performance review. A taste of their own medicine will be bittersweet, I can tell you."

"Recently, it has come to my attention that our development team has not been educated on more modern software [Windows 95]. I think if they spent less time with their 'yewnicks' systems, they would be brought into the 20th century."

and this line I just heard not more than an hour ago:

"The current client has no less than 500 mistakes. I want 500 less than that number. People have said, 'We can't put out a bug-free product,' but I say if you can go one second without a mistake, you can go ten seconds without a mistake. And if you can go ten seconds without a mistake, you can go a minute without one. If you can go a minute, you can go an hour, and you can produce no bugs in days, weeks, months, years and we'll have a bug-free product. Is that too much to ask, not to make a mistake every second?"

Two dev people quit after that speech. I may only be one girl on the phones and know little about programming, but that last piece of manipulation floored me. I wonder if the new leader could put his personal life to such a test?

A while ago I was interning in the IS department of (company), which prided itself on a highly-capable tech support staff (and the whole department has since been outsourced, but that's another story...)

One of the major facets of the support program was "Support Stress Management". Somebody'd had a brainstorm and realized that most people who are absolute morons don't like having this fact pointed out to them, and thus a program was started to train people in how not to express extreme frustration while still on the phone. It didn't always work out as planned.

One afternoon, I was walking past one of the support cubicles when I heard a loud thumping. I looked in to see a grimacing tech violently beating his coffee mug against the wall while clutching the phone in a white-knuckled, shuddering grip. He put the phone back to his ear, listened for a few seconds, then quite calmly said "No, ma'am, that noise was just part of our system software."

Way back when I'd just finished high school, I interned in the IS department of (company). At the time, I still had no idea that not everybody in the world was as young and unafraid of computers as I was, so I often made up amusing "reasons" for the many mysterious and unique computer ailments that we cured through the magic of rebooting.

My first hint that all might not be fun and games came when my supervisor called me on the carpet, asking me why I'd told a client that her computer was possessed by aliens from Mars.

While new at my internship in (company)'s IS department, I was sent around the building to "name" all the printers. In an effort to help with troubleshooting the scads of printers we had, we'd decided to clearly label each printer with its network path, so that when one stalled or jammed we could deal with the print queue.

Labeler in hand, I set out to track down all the various printers in the building. However, I was stopped by a nice lady who handed me a bottle of clear nail polish and said "Here, use this to make them stick better." Not sure whether she was joking, I asked what to do with it. "Just follow the directions, hon."

To this day I have _no_ idea what she meant.

I work at a hospital as the system admin and every now and then I get a call from a doctor wanting to get his Email when he's at home or on the road. We have CC:Mail here and remote access is not a problem unless....

Dr: How can I get my CC:Mail from AOL...

Me: I'm sorry, AOL does not support that...

Dr: Well then, Can I get it using Smart-Term...

Me: No, Smart-Term is not able to do that either...

Dr: Well Then, I guess its not very Smart(Term) is it..

I received a call. The complaint was that the CDRom

Drive was not functioning properly. I asked what was

wrong. The answer was that when the CDRom was placed

in the player, nothing happened, even after fliping the

lever on the CDROM Player.

Did you place the CDROM in the tray of the CDROM Drive?

Answer: No

Did push the button on the CDROM Drive to activate the

tray?

Answer: No

And you are placing CDROM's into the Drive.

Answer: Yes, I put the CDROM in the slot and flipped the

lever. Noting happens and it won't give me my CDROM back.

My reply: A 5 1/4 floppy drive will not play CDROMS even

when the lever is set.

I was sent to a residence on a service call.

It was a Packard Bell PC with no sound.

I plugged my powered speakers into the CD drive's

headphone jack to see if sound was being lost somewhere

between the CD drive and the sound card.

"May I have an audio CD?" I asked.

The client looked though the box of floppy disks.

"No. I mean one from the stereo."

He returned in a minute. I put the CD in the drive and

finally found the application that plays CDs. The client

seemed surprised the PC had this feature. The application

said I needed a playlist before CDs could be played and

showed two audio tracks. I guessed it was two long songs,

possibly classical music. Clicking 'ok' seemed to satisfy

the playlist requirement. Clicking the 'play' symbol caused

the elapsed time indicator to run but only white noise was

coming from the speaker.

"That seems ok" the client said.

"Huh? It sounds like noise" I said.

"No, it's one of those 'Sounds of Nature' CDs."

Had the client tried, he could not have chosen a less

suitable CD for testing the speakers. I may have said

that aloud. A Michael Bolton CD was substituted.

(CD Drive ok, sound card ok, AC adapter for speakers bad.)

Not the funniest, but certainly quite ammusing little transcript of a call I had tonight:

Tech: Mac tech support, how can I help you?

User: I can't logon. I'm continually asked for my username and password.

Tech: Ok, open FreePPP Setup, click on Accounts, and click Edit.

User: Ok, I'm here.

Tech: What does "username:" say?

User: It says (username removed)

Tech: Ok, I see your account is active, let me check your password. What is it?

User: 'elvis' in all lower case.

Tech: Ok, I just ran that throught our auth. servers, and it's incorrect.

User: What?!?! My password is elvis, I'm sure of it!

Tech: Look on your invoice, what does password say?

User: You mean it's on my invoice? But I want my password to be 'elvis'.

Tech: Ok, you can change it online at...

User: I want it to be 'elvis', that's what I wanted from that start.

Tech: Ok, you can go to the web site...

User: I don't think you understand, I wanted 'elvis' as my password!

Tech: Sigh (hang up) Whoops.

I work in an... ahem... educational institution as a lab assistant. Basicaly all I do is make sure people don't put their fists through the monitors or something. Anyway, I was working one Saturday when this lady sat down and opened her "Windows 95 With Applications" textbook (a class we teach). It tells her to put her disk in the drive and she attempts to do so.

I figure everything is fine and go raid the faculty workroom for coffee. When I come back, the lady is FORCING a thick, 3.5 inch floppy into a 5.25 inch drive. The thing is lodged in about half way and the lady is hammering it in with a bottle of nail polish remover. I scream...

Fortunately, no diskettes or drives were harmed in the course of this story. A little later on in the semester after she had some more experience, we both ended up having a good laugh about it. What can I say? People learn from making mistakes...

I work as a technician for an insurance company. Occasionally we get managers home pc to work on.

This one PC became our first nominee for the prestigious "Temp file award".

This machine is a 486 66 8meg and 325meg drive, a real file server here. It gets the nomination because when

checking this before installing some software I found 823 temp files on his drive.

I still surprised the system still was working.

I work at a HelpDesk at a small midwestern college. One day while working over a break, we received a call asking for help doing a tape backup...a very typical request, and we figured the problems he was experiencing were due to some simple user error.

The other employee left to provide assistance while I stayed in the office to continue working on other open calls. When he got back he had this crazy grin on his face, and told me this story:

The professor who placed the request worked in the college science building. The door to the room the computer was in had this in large letters on the door:

"DANGER! NO PACEMAKERS! POWERFUL MAGNETIC FIELD!"

Turned out the professor wanted to do a tape backup because computers placed in that room tend to cease functioning after a relatively brief period. The monitor would also do all kinds of funky things, but the professor could get it to work by adjusting the video settings. The magnetic tape backup was, of course, an exercise in futility, so when we closed the call in our database we entered this as the solution:

"Upgrade to optical technology."

HelpDesk Consultant: "This is the Helpdesk. How may we help you?"

Customer: "Help! There's smoke pouring out of my computer! The hard drive has caught fire before, but it worked fine after we put it out. What should I do?"

HelpDesk Consultant: "Okay. Unplug your computer. THROW IT AWAY."

User: I just renamed a file in file manager and now I can't open the document.

Me: When you renamed the file, did you put the extension on it?

User: No.

Me: OK, just rename them and put the correct extension on them and they will open again. The three letters after the dot(.) identify to the system what type of program it is.

User: No, you don't understand, there is nothing there now! !

Me: OK, wait, let me view your screen and I'll show you what I mean. See, these files have no .doc or .xls after the file name.

User: Yes, but there is nothing there now.

Me: Please explain to me what you mean. I don't think I understand what you are saying.

User: See, these other pieces of paper have lines on them, these files lost their lines, the data is all gone now.

I renamed the files at this point and the "lines" reappeared on the "paper" beside the file name.

User: How did you get my data back?

i work for a local isp.

one day i got a call from a guy who said "i need to use your email service!"

thinking that he wanted to sign up, i explained the various accounts we have, etc.

he then said "i have to get a picture emailed to me by this afternoon, how do i do that?"

i explained to him about how attaching a file to email works.

he then said "can't i just use your email service? my offices are in detroit and i'm here in (our isp's town)."

i pointed out to him that he would need to establish an account with us and then if he wasn't going to be here for at least a month he could cancel and thrash it out with billing.

"so what are your accounts like, then?" he asked, forgetting that i had just explained them to him. after calmly *re*explaining them to him, i got a rather grunted "okay" and nothing more. thinking, like the fool that i am, that "okay" means "it's okay, go ahead and do it", i asked him for his name and address.

"for what?" he practically sneered.

i explained to him that i needed this to set up an account.

"why do i want to set up an account with you?"

to get email, you nimrod, i nearly shouted.

after going over the requirements of email and our accounts one more time, he finally stated, "look, i don't want an account. i want you to let me use your email service so i can come in and pick up this picture by this afternoon!" i then had to explain that nobody rides for free...

Overheard on radio station:

DJ: Hello, what song would you like to hear today?

Caller: Oh, I was trying to get on the Internet!

DJ: You have to have a computer to get on the Internet.

Caller: Oh! (click)

Me: Thank you for calling XXXXX technical support, how

may I help you?

Cust: OH MY GOD YES !!! I need some help removing

some viruses from my machine.

Me: I can help you with that, but what makes you think

you have a virus on your machine?

Cust: Well I just bought an anti-virus program and it is

telling me that I have 5000 viruses on my machine.

Me: Mam, I think you are misunderstanding the message...

Cust: No I am reading it on the screen right now and it

says I have 5000 viruses

Me: Mam I believe it is saying that it can detect

up to 5000 viruses.

Cust: No it does not it is saying that I have 5000

viruses!!

Me: Mam it would be impossible for you to have 5000 viruses

on your machine....

Cust: Look I don't know how many times I have to tell you

this but I know what I am reading and it is telling

me I have 5000 viruses.

Me: OOOOOKAAAAAY just run the virus program and tell it

to clean your system and if the viruses come back just

give the manufacturer of that software package a call

and they will be able to help you.

The caller was having problems using our software. In order

to troubleshoot it, we usually have the caller close out of

any/all apps that are running. After asking the caller to do

so:

ME: Sir, are you back at your desktop now?

CALLER: No. I'm at the cocktail table in my living room!

This caller was quite irate, complaining that our software

(speech recognition with a built-in word processor) had

'stolen his mouse'! The call went something like this:

ME: How can I help you?

CALLER: Your product stole my mouse and I want it back!

ME: Uh, what do you mean it stole your mouse?

CALLER: Well, when I'm using your product there's no mouse

on the screen.

ME: Sir, do you mean a cursor? The mouse is the thing with

the wire that you hold in your hand and move the cursor

around with.

CALLER: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. I don't know what

it's called. All I know is I don't have the thing on the

screen.

ME: Ok, sir, when you move your mouse with your hand, is

there anything moving on the screen?

CALLER: Yeah

ME: Sir, what does it look like?

CALLER: Well, it used to look like an arrow, but now it's

gone.

ME: Ok, but I thought you just said it was moving on the

screen?

CALLER: NO! There's no arrow moving. It's some other thing.

ME: OK, what does it look like?

CALLER: I don't know. Kinda like a capital I, maybe.

ME: (The light dawns) OK. Sir, if you move the thing up

on the screen to the top and put it on top of a button or

one of the words like FILE, EDIT, VIEW what does the thing

look like?

CALLER: An arrow! But every time I move down to your product

it disappears! That's what I'm trying to tell you! I want

my mouse!

ME: Ok, I see. Sir, how long have you had this computer?

CALLER: This is my first one. I bought it yesterday!

I then explained to him that the thing was called a pointer

and that it changed shape depending upon where he moved it

to on the screen. Newbies!

The next type of call I've actually handled twice in the

last 6 months:

ME: Ok, could you please right click on the 'My Computer

icon?

CALLER: (silence)

ME: Sir, I need you to right click on the 'My Computer' icon.

CALLER: (silence)

ME: Sir, are you still there? Can you hear me?

CALLER: Yes.

ME: OK, can you please right click on the icon with the

right mouse button?

CALLER: Ah, all I have is a big button and a little button.

'Nuff said!

customer: Yeah, is this tech support

me: yes sir it is, may I help you?

customer: i have a problem with my computer. everytime i flush my toilet my computer reboots.

me: what???

customer: each time I flush my toilet my computer reboots. my wife won't let me use the restroom when she is using the computer because she has been losing a lot of work.

me: sir, i believe troubleshooting this problem may take awhile.

customer: i have called other tech support and they can't figure it out.

many questions and answers later....

me: ok, so each time you flush the toilet the lights dim and the computer reboots

customer: yes,

i determined that the customer was out in the middle of nowhere and he was not on city water. He had his own well and pump, so each time he flushed his toilet his pump kicked in and caused a low power surge. Thus the reboot.

He was literly flushing his system

Larry Farmer "Complete Computer Service"

I had taken a call that required the customer obtain

a small screwdriver for the purpose of removing chips

from the unit and he informed me that he needed to put the phone down and leave his office to get the tool.

After waiting for several minutes and hearing just a faint clicking on the line I decided to release the call and call back.

When his secretary answered I identified myself and she said,"Oh, we've been waiting for you to call back, unfortunatley the locksmith can't get out here till this afternoon so we'll have to take care of this later."

I work in a Computer School where most of our student body consists of people that have never used computers before in their lives.

These are some of the stories I have to tell:

"I can't open my file"

A student saved a Word Processing file in one of our computers Hard Disk, the next day the computer she was sitting at was occupied and so she on the computer next to it. She spent 20 minutes trying to open the file she created "in the computers" before she asked an instructor for help.

"My mouse is Crazy"

A student was calling for help saying his mouse was crazy, I walk up to him and notice he is holding the mouse upside down, I point out his mistake to him (trying not to laugh) he apparently sees this and tells me with a serious face: "The tail of the mouse is behind it not in front it!" I guess he has a point... :)

"This computer sucks"

A very angry student was complaining to his classmate, " We pay good money to come here!, they should get better computers! These computers suck!", I ask the student what the problem is and what I can do to help but the student just continues rambling on and on… after 10 minutes of talking to her I finally get the student to tell me what the problem with the computers is: "These computers don't have any information!!, Whenever I use Find to look for information on any topic the computer says 0 Files found".

No wonder Bill Gates wants to integrate the Internet to Windows so much….

"Everything is a Website"

Student: "I want to get in the Internet".

Me: "Sure, you have to go downstairs to the Internet Center, log on and then you can Browse the Internet"

Student: "Why cant I do it from here?"

Me: "Because this classroom is not connected to the Internet"

Student: "That's not true, I saw another student on the Internet in this classroom yesterday!"

Me: "That's Impossible, this Classroom does not have an Internet connection."

Student: "But its true!"

Me: "How do you know she was on the Internet?"

Student: "She showed me a webpage to play solitaire!"

I quickly ran Solitaire in the computer and walked out of the room. The other student had also convinced half the class, that Paint was a cool 'WebSite' they should all try.

(By the way, I'm a secretary, not a tech support rep!)

This is a long one, but funny.......

About three years ago, I was working as an administrative assistant in the HR department of a major computer company (which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons.) They had recently started administering a computerized test to potential manufacturing hires (basic math/workplace skills, that sort of thing) as part of the hiring process. One of my responsibilities was backing up the regular tester when she was out of the office. Since the testing system was new, the setup was more or less thrown together--seven of the ten test stations were routed to a dot-matrix printer that was nothing but trouble (it constantly misfed the paper, misplaced the page breaks, and there was no way to queue jobs on it--you had to print each job seperately) and three hooked up to a far more reliable inkjet printer. We had been promised a new printer as soon as they found one someone wanted to get rid of...(?) Because of the highly confidential nature of the results, we were not allowed to leave anything on the hard drive--all the data had to be saved to disk after it was printed for the interviewing managers.

One day I had to cover the afternoon session. When I got there (The main HR department was at one site and the test site was at the manufacturing site itself, about 25 minutes away) I found Vicky (not her real name!) very close to hysterical. The dot matrix printer wouldn't print. She told me she had called Tech Support and they were sending a field engineer out, but they had told her not to touch anything, what was she going to do, she couldn't print the reports and the managers were going to be mad, if she couldn't print she couldn't save the results to the A disk, which was a security violation and she was going to get in trouble but what could she do since they wouldn't give her the equipment she needed to do her job...etc, etc, etc.....I tried to point out that she could save the results and print them from the disk when the printer was fixed, but she just freaked out yelling "No, no, you don't understand, Maddy, the printer's not working----" At that point I gave up. Anyway, the next group of applicants was arriving, so she stayed around long enough to give them all the instructions and get them started (she didn't really trust me to do it) before she finally left--again instructing me NOT to do ANYTHING with the machines. After everyone had finished and was on the way to his/her HR interview, I saved all the data and then started printing from the three machines hooked to the inkjet--and decided to take a look at the dot matrix to see if I could somehow narrow down what the problem was. First, I tried printing from the terminal under the shelf the printer sat on--PRINTER ERROR--PRINTER IS OFF LINE OR BUSY, PRESS F1 TO ABORT, ENTER TO RETRY (or words to that effect.) Okay, then. Next, I tried printing from several of the other terminals, wondering if it was just that one computer. Same error. Okay, Step 3. I went over to the printer, turned it off, then turned it back on. It restarted normally, so I tried printing again. Still no go. (Same error.)

So---I kicked off my high heels and climbed up on the desk to check the cables. The first two were fine, but the third was--you guessed it---better than three-quarters of the way out of the socket. I plugged it back in nice and tight, checked the last one (don't ask me which was which, except that the power cord was obviously not the one that was loose!) climbed down, found my shoes, restarted the printer for good measure and tried to print again. Success! Just as I was putting my shoes back on, the HR recruiter walked in to see if everyone was done testing.

"We need ti cancel the emergency support call," I said as she stared wide-eyed at the printer.

"What was it?" she said, obviously quite happy. "Maddy, what did you do?"

Can you imagine me trying to keep a straight face as I said "I plugged it back in."

(virbatim, spelling mistakes and all)

"NETSCAPE SUCKS!I TRIED NETSCAPE AND I COUNLD NOT SET

UP AN ACCOUNT. WHEN I CALLED NETSCAPE THEY SAID THAT

THERE ACCOUNT SERVER WAS DOWN, BEN DOWN FOR A

MONTH, AND THEY WERE NOT GOING TO FIX IT. I TOOK IT

BACK AND BOUGHT MICROSOFT INTERNET BROWSER."

I guess Microsoft's account server must be up and running...

A while ago I had a customer come into my business and ask for an external modem and an Internet Starter Kit.

A few hours later I received a phone call from the customer who wanted to know why the modem wouldn't work. so I went through the usual troubleshooting, is the modem turned on?, is it hooked up to the phone line? I asked if they had set the COM port, and we proceeded to set it up, but it still wouldn't work. I then said to check the cable between the modem and the computer and check for bent pins on the end. "Computer?" they asked, "do I need a computer?"

I had a user that would complain of his computer

shutting down without warning. So I went to his office

to find out the problem.

He would never look up at his screen while

he was typing, and his touch typing skills weren't up to

par.

He would try to type:

Thus

But he would miss the shift key and hit the "Windows" key.

Followed with a "U" (to shutdown) and then an enter

some where along the line. The next time he looked up,

"It's now safe to turn off your computer"

My company supplies System Management software to large

enterprises such as corporations and government offices.

One of our duties is to issue "License Keys" - enabling

code that consists of unique numeric ID's incorporating

the customer's purchase date, host ID and other info.

The customer pastes the text into a file which is used

by the software to determine how long and on which

machines the software will be allowed to run until their

license expires.

Today, I got an irate voice mail from a federal government

office saying "We applied for a license key and all we

got was an email. We are not paying for this stuff until

you give us a real key!"

Sigh. Our tax dollars at work.

One day while returning to my desk after a routine call, a young lady flagged me down and asked for help.

"My floppy drive won't work, can you help me ?"

I told her I'd take a look and proceeded over to her machine, where I found shredded up clear plastic Baggie-like stuff hanging out of her 3.5" floppy drive. While I spent the next 20 minutes getting out her disk and digging out the plastic, I noticed two guys in the corner of the office trying awful hard to keep a straight face. Suspecting some mischief, I asked her how the plastic got into the drive.

"Oh, you mean the condom!"

"Condom???"

"Yes, John & Dave over there told me to always put a condom on my disk before inserting it, to prevent catching viruses"

By this point John & Dave were roaring and it was all I could do to keep from joining them. The "condom" turned out to be a standard 3.5" plastic sleeve. I delicately explained to her that a practical joke had been played and she shouldn't do that anymore, when she asked (as serious as could be) "Does that mean I don't have to stroke it ten times or blow on it either???"

One morning about a year or so ago, I was working quietly at my desk rescheduling a meeting for the eighteenth time (yes, I'm a secretary) when my phone rang. I picked it up and it turned out to be a friend of mine who worked at a nearby site (same company.)

Me: Maddy speaking....

Him: I can't believe this! They just put Windows on all the computers in the control center! I hate this! I want DOS back! How am I supposed to do anything?

Me: Well, what are you trying to do? (Figuring I'd be nice and give it a shot...)

Him: This is ridiculous--all I have for my mail is this little tiny screen. Why can't they just stick with the old way?

Me: (Innocently) Even when you maximized it? (Sometimes when you maximize a window for the old email system, it doesn't come up to full size--and you can't pull on it and expand it. I've tried.)

Him: Huh?

Me: Didn't you maximize it?

Him: What do you mean?

Me: Look on the title bar---

Him: The what? Maddy, don't get technical....

Me: Up at the top of the little square at the far right. There should be three little boxes there--one with a minus sign, one with a big square and one with an "X". Click on the big square.....

Him: Oh yeah, that's better. Why do they have to make this stuff so complicated?

The scary part--he worked in the control center monitoring security/safety alarms.......

I should confess to a good one I nearly pulled. Several months ago, after I'd revamped a distribution list for the deaprtments I handled at the time (I'm a secretary, of course), I sent out a test note. This is what I almost sent:

"This is just a test of the latest distribution list for the department. If you don't receive this note, let me know....."

Maybe I should have, just to see if I got any responses.....

I'm a tech support rep for a computer company, and it's only been my 3rd day on the job. Even in this short time, I've heard enough to make a 3 year tech vet cry. Here's just a little something to make you chuckle.

Me: Thank you for calling --- Technical Support. My name is Scott (asked for computer info, etc., and then...) How may I help you?

Them: Yeah. I tried to download this file one of your techs told me to download, but when I type in this address they gave me, i kept getting "File Not Found".

Me: Er, "File Not Found", sir?

Them: Yeah, I tried to acce-... aw, hell... Could you hold on a second?

Me: Su-

Them: (Away from phone) Honey? Come here and tell this guy what you did!

Me: (Getting a tad peeved at my ringing ears)

Them: He-hello?

Me: Yes, ma'am?

Them: Well, I typed in this address and it gave me that "File Not Found" error... Oh, wait, there it is again... This time it says "DNS Entry Not Valid".

Me: (I hit the mute button to keep from laughing in the lady's face) And what address did they give you?

Them: www.---.com

Me: (Apply hand to forehead to produce loud smack) Ma'am, just type in "http://" in front of that and try it.

Them: Okay, hold on... (Clicking sounds) It worked! You're a miracle worker! Thank you!

Me: You're welcome, ma'am!

I agree, it's not much, but it's just one of those things that makes you go, "Huh?!?!" a la Scooby Doo! :-)

Working as a tech at an ISP, I got to share this one.

ME: ISP this is adam

Moron Lady: Yes I got your disks by mail and I need help installing

them.

Me: OK, Is your computer on?

Moron Lady: Yes, but the screen is black.

Me: Click on the keyboard.

Moron Lady: (Makes Noise) I clicked my mouse on the keyboard

and nothing happened.

Me:(Putting the phone on mute, I sighed and knew this would be a while)

Push a key on the keyboard.

Moron Lady: Which one?

Me: (Now frustrated)Any key

Moron Lady: (quiet for a few moments) where is the any key?

ME: (hitting mute again and laughing about setting myself up for the classic joke)

Hit the spacebar.

Moron Lady: Ok...Now what?

Me: Click start and then click on run.

Moron Lady: Ok...Did that.

Me: type a:\setup.exe

Moron Lady: Does it matter if it is caps?

Me: No just type it(getting more frustrated)

Moron Lady: Ok, I'm computer illiterate, so

this could be awhile

Me: (I have heard this a million times and wanted to say: yes,

but you are also direction illiterate, how do you function in everyday

life; but I really said) We all start somewhere it is not that hard.

Moron Lady: Ok I typed it in now what.

Me: Place the disk labeled disk #1 into the floppy drive.

Moron Lady: (Clicking sound of disk locking in) Ok

Me: hit enter

Moron Lady: Ok... should i agree with license?

Me: Yes, follow the directions on screen and put in the disk it

tells you to.

Moron Lady: Sounds easy..ok..the light on the drive is on and making a sound.

Computer makes the microsoft alert sound

Me: Ok, if says put disk #2 in do so now.

Moron Lady: Ok this is easier than I thought.

I hear all kinds of noise and her sighing.

Mornon Lady: I'm sorry, my computer must not be compatable.

Me: HUH?

Moron Lady: I tried, but I cannot get the second disk in there,

it only holds one, I might be able to squeeze it in but I know the

other disks will not fit with those two in.

Me: Hold Please( I put her on hold, took my headset off and banged my head against

it a few times and told my system admin that I couldn't handle this one, he had to take

it.

System Admin: Well I don't usually do tech support but if you think you can't solve

I guess.

He spend the next hour on the phone with her and I laughed, watching him get frustrated the whole time.

Even highly-paid *** consultants can mess up; one of them

called in a problem with not being able to edit the user

preferences in our e-mail administration software. I asked

for a copy of the user database files, thinking they had become

corrupted somehow, but they checked out perfectly so finally

I asked him to step through exactly what he was doing and tell

me everything and it turns out that he, after being done

editing a user, hit the X in the top right corner of the

preferences window instead of hitting the OK button.

He's never called in again.

I work on support for a mid-sized ISP, and took a call

from a customer one day, complaining that he was having

problems installing our software from CD. We'd already

sent a replacement item after he complained of these

problems on a previous call, so I tried to find out if a

partial installation had taken place, which might have

caused problems of this type. He found a few relevant files

on his hard drive, which I asked him to delete. He

tried, then said that they were still there, and it still

wouldn't install. He then mentioned that he'd had to

replace his hard-drive after his house had been struck by

lightning recently. He'd also been unable to install his

modem, did I think that there could be a problem with his

motherboard? Somehow, I managed to agree politely with him

and end the call.

I am not a tech support person, but this story deals

with blundered tech support--from the viewpoint of

the other side--the side of the customer.

Back in the early days of laptop computers (1992), I

had purchased an Apple PowerBook 100 (One of the

first true laptops available.) I already had a

desktop Macintosh and decided that it would be nice

to network the two to transfer files between them

and to install software on the PowerBook. Networks

were much simpler in those days. Since the printer

that was on the desktop Mac hung on the SCSI bus

rather than using the printer serial port (as most

of them did), I had the printer port free on the

desktop Mac. Now, ordinarily, the way you put a

small Mac network together in those days was to put

something like a AppleTalk/PhoneNet connector into

the printer port of each Mac (including the

printers) and then daisy-chain all the Macs by

stringing modular phone cables. Put a temination

resistor in the extra phone jack at each end of the

chain, turn on Apple FileSharing and -- there you

have it -- instant network. The problem was that, in

those days, the AppleTalk/PhoneNet connectors were

very expensive. I had only two Macs and the printer

wasn't on the serial bus, so I got some advice from

a co-worker who told me that I could just use a

printer cable to connect the two Macs. He loaned he

his printer cable to try it out overnight. It worked

just as we expected. Of course, he needed that cable

back, so I had go buy my own (cheap at under $10,

much less than AppleTalk/PhoneNet connectors).

Now the fun starts. I drive down to my local

Authorized Apple Dealer (that was the only place to

buy Macs in those days--they were supposedly trained

and knowledgeable), and asked the salesman for a

printer cable. There were several different kinds of

cable, so I had to make sure that both ends of the

cable had the connector that would connect with the

printer port on each computer. Well, the salesman

started questioning why I wanted the cable (almost

all printers in those days came with the proper

cable to connect it to the CPU). I wasn't as smart

back then as I am now. I explained to him what I was

going to do with the cable.

Well, that started it. He told me that it wouldn't

work--I would have to buy two AppleTalk/PhoneNet

connectors (at aobut $50 each)--that $10 cable

wouldn't work that way. After several minutes of

arguing with him (he refused to sell me the

cable--don't you wish the salesmen today were as

honest?), he went in the back to fetch one of the

Authorized Service techs to explain to me why it

wouldn't work. Well, the arguement continued--now it

was two against one--for several more minutes till

the salesman went in the back and fetched the

Service Manager.

I let him join in the "explanation" for a minute or

two till I just got frustrated and played my

"ace-in-the-hole": so far I had not told any of them

that I had this setup working yesterday evening with

the borrowed cable. I took the opportunity to

describe exactly how I had hooked up the two Macs,

what settings I had done to start the AppleTalk

connection and start FileSharing on both Macs. I

proceeded to tell them how I had tested out the

connection and setup by transfering files in both

directions from each of the Macs. I ended the

discussion with, "If you people are going to be

selling and repairing these things, you really ought

to learn about them first--before you talk to

customers. Now will you please sell me this @$%&%#@

cable and let me get out of here?"

Without any further words from anyone, the two

Service people disappeared and the salesman rang up

my sale on the register.

Sometimes it is enjoyable to turn the tables on the

supposedly "techno-savvy."

Here is an exerpt of one of the e-mails sent to tech support by a customer:

Why is the telephone yellow now? Did you change something?

Thanks

I was helping a co-worker install a program on her pc, and

she asked if I could help her with another matter. She

showed me a spreadsheet she had in Excel, and explained

that although it was nice having this in the computer, it

still took way too long to add things up. She knew it

should be easier, but it took her several hours. It looked

as if the only thing she needed to do was to sum a column,

and that should only be a matter of seconds for the 1000

or so records she had; so I asked her how she had been

doing this. She said she was typing everything in,

printing it out, and then adding it up on a calculator.

I do pre and post sales support for a worldwide distributor

of computer products.

One of my co-workers took a call from a customer asking for

a digital camera with a flash that would not reflect off of

glass.

Since she was new she asked me if I knew of one. I told her

as soon as I rewrite the laws of physics I will get one.

Thanks to Microsoft's insane version system, this tale occurs often,

with many variants. Here are a few of my recent favorites.

1.

Me: User1, We have to upgrade your copy of Microsoft Office to 97, since

that's what everyone uses in the lab.

User1: Great, Is it compatable with Win 95, which I have at home?

Me: Sure, Windows 95 is on all of the machines here.

User1: But I thought you said you were going to upgrade mine to 97.

Me: No, I said I was going to upgrade your copy of Office to 97.

User1: Exactly, is it compatable with Win 95?

Me: Yes, it might be called Office 97, but it is runs under

Windows 95.

User1: So when you're done I'll have Windows 97, right?

(argh!)

2.

User2: I hear you're in the process of upgrading us all to Windows 97.

Me: Actually, we're upgrading to Microsoft Office 97, our operating

system will continue to be Windows 95.

(upgrade done, weeks pass, the next comment

overheard during a phone conversation)

User2: I don't know if you'll be able to open our document, we use

Windows 97 over here.

(doh!)

3.

User3: Since I don't have Windows 97, I can't open this document at home.

Me: Have you tried? Do you have Microsoft Office 97 at home?

User3: Everyone knows you can't open a document made with Windows 97

on a machine running Windows 95. I thought it would be dumb

to try.

Me: Did you install Office using the CD we have at the lab?

User3: Yes.

Me: So, you used this CD to install Office 97, which has Word 97?

User3: Right.

Me: I assure you, we're using Windows 95 here, and using Office 97

with Word 97 for word processing.

User3: Now I'm confused.

Me: Me too, but don't worry, try it at home, it will work fine.

(damn you Microsoft)

In sum, Windows 95, Windows 98, Office 95, Office 97, Outlook 98.

I can keep it straight, but none of the people I work for can. I blame

Microsoft somewhat, but geez -- it frightens me how many people

think office suites are synonymous with operating systems. I could have

My tale is from the other side, as a user I had trouble believing the announcement that the NT conversion would make life wonderful when everyone had the same version of operating system and software. ( corporate newsletter )

NT conversions started July 1997, our department ( 50 people ) was converted February to August 1998 and the one person missed was scheduled for July 1999 yes 99!

The entire 4000 user corporation will be done Dec 1999.

The process appears to be 2 a day Tuesdays through Thursdays and every fourth week they reconvert the 80 % at have problems during the initial try.

The Critical, Mission Impossible without it software I need to do my job was finally working on my machine March 31st.

I was initally converted February 25th and there have been 11 downloads since then to fix problems.

A number of people have refused to be converted and we have a DOS/WIN machine in a office that no one from IS is allowed to touch.

IS still talks of the new improved world we are entering, and since word and excel are run off the network, it takes two minutes to load word to respond to the nonsense.

The good news? The arguement that I need to work at home cause my home machine is faster is never questioned.

The Air Force's training center for military intelligence is abundantly equipped with UNIX and NTworkstations, and the instructors are well versed in the technology. However, some of the office staff is definitely from the pre-PC era. When one had trouble with their screen freezing up, he reported that rebooting didn't seem to help. Oblivious to the system's power button out of sight under his desk, he spotted the power button on the monitor and kept switching it off and on, off and on.

The Air Force's training center for military intelligence is abundantly equipped with UNIX and NTworkstations, and the instructors are well versed in the technology. However, some of the office staff is definitely from the pre-PC era. When one had trouble with their screen freezing up, he reported that rebooting didn't seem to help. Oblivious to the system's power button out of sight under his desk, he spotted the power button on the monitor and kept switching it off and on, off and on.

Cust: Hello, is this tech support for xxxx Software?

Me: Yes, how can I help you?

Cust: Well, I've been using the single user version of your software, and now I have the network version. I am setting up an NT network, and I want to know how to set up xxxx Software on the NT network.

Me: Noooo problem, you just need to copy the data files from the existing workstation to the network. (I start to tell him which files, etc.)

Cust: Interupting...Excuse me.....pregnant pause.....How do you COPY FILES???????

Note: And this guy is setting up an NT Network!

I ran into this one while I was working tech support for a company that sold computers as well as appliances. A lady called with a problem and told me that she couldn't get the W off the corner of her screen. She can get it off the cable channels, but she couldn't get it off channels 3, 5, and 8. When I told her that it was from a weather warning, she did not believe me and she brought in her TV and insisted that I plug her set in and show her that the W was not on those channels anymore.

A customer called me and said,

Cu: My computer is sick

Me: (Thats what I would say about my own computer if it was

broken, so I probed the customer for more info),

Whats wrong with your computer?

Cu: My computer is sick!

Me: What do you mean when you say your computer is sick,

what seems to be the problem with it.

Cu: It's not my computer, it's my husbands computer.

Me: So what seems to be the problem with your husbands

computer ??

Cu: You know, it has a cold or something!?

Me: Pardon?

Cu: It has a cold or something,`COUGH, COUGH' (Customer

Coughs into the handset)

Me: Could you please hold, 'HOLD' - .... To the other tech's

Is there a doctor in the house?... ROTFL

I work for an Internet call center. We support various OS', among them Windows95 and Mac OS.

I had a user call in with problems getting connected. Like most users, she didn't bother to write down the error.

Me: Hello, Technical Support. How can I help you?

Lady: Hello, I'm having problems connecting to the internet.

Me: Ok, are you using Windows 95?

Lady: Yes.

Me: Do you see the Start button in the bottom left corner?

Lady: Yes.

Me: Ok, click the Start button.

Lady: I can't.

Me: Do you see 'My computer'?

Lady: Yes.

Me: Ok, double click on that.

Lady: I can't.

Me: Ok, what color is your mouse cursor? Black or white?

Lady: Black.

>From there, I found that she was using the Mac OS and managed to get her online. Hopefully she'll notice the absence of the Start menu and 'My computer' icon one of these days. :)

Problem: At least once a night Alter.net lags like a

madman. I have noticed lag bursts that have

exceeded 10-15mins.

Error messages: Tracert consistently shows that alter.net is the

cause of the problem, with 90% of the time

"No response" is the message (when it's lagging,

anyway)

Steps taken: If I could find a way to not route through

Alter.net, I would love to :) If there is a way,

please inform me :)

----

This form-mail just popped up in my inbox. It's a classic

example of "knows enough to be dangerous", don't you

think? Now I have to politely explain that no, it's not

possible to avoid Alter.net hops since *our* provider *is*

Alter.net (aka UUNET, the single largest backbone on the

'net).

I work on a help desk for a large ISP and after working on

the phones on my very first day, it finally begun to dawn

on me the stupidity of our clients...

This is a transcription of the conversation that took

place between me and one client on my first day.

Me: "Good afternoon, (MY ISP NAME) How can I help you?"

Idiot: "Oh, hi. I'm having trouble with my email..."

Me: "Ok, no problem. Can I get your login id please?"

Idiot: "What's the login id?"

(Haha... we have a sharp one here, I think to myself.

Whenever we get asked that, we know we're in for a long

call. I explain to her what it is)

Idiot: Oh, right. My login id is... hang on a second...

is that the same as the username?...

(*Sigh* We get that one alot).

Me: Yes.

Idiot: Oh right, it's....(deleted)

Me: Ok, so what is the problem?

Idiot: Well, when I try to load Microsoft Outlook, it comes

up with an error message saying 'Pop server down' or

something?

Me: What that error message means that you're not connected.

Have you connected to us before?

Idiot: Well, yes, we've had the account for awhile but

we just bought a new computer and...

(she prattles on)

Me: What operating system are you using?

Idiot: What sorry?

Me: Do you have Windows 95?

Idiot: Yes, I have Windows 95.

(Oh god... I'm not going through setup with this chick

manually, I think to myself - stuff that! As she babbles

on that it becomes apparent the user barely understands

concepts such as double clicking and furthermore Dialup

Networking isn't even setup).

Me: Ok, do you have a fax machine there?

Idiot: Yes, I do.

Me: Ok, because setting up Dialup Networking takes some

time as does the mail (bollocks, it would just take ages

explaining it to this halfwit)what I'll do is fax out some

instructions to you which can use to setup it up. Is that

ok?

Idiot: Oh, that would be wonderful. Thanks so much.

(I get the fax number, wrap the call up, think nothing of

it. I then get a call back about half an hour later).

Me: "Good afternoon, (MY ISP NAME), (MY NAME) speaking,

how can I help you?"

Idiot: Hi, it's me again. My login id is (deleted)

Me (groaning inwardly): Oh yes, I was just talking to you

before. How is it going?

Idiot: Well, I just received your fax instructions, I was

wondering, did you want me to follow them?

Me (Pause): I'm sorry, could I put you on hold for a second.

(?????????? I drop the phone momentarily in sheer shock

and put her on hold so I can laugh myself silly).

Me (taking her off hold): Yes, you will need to follow

those instructions.

Idiot: Oh, ok. That's all I wanted to know. Thankyou.

(Click!)

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Im a student at Florida Atlantic University. In our student computer lab, we have

specialists who are supposed to help us with the software and fix any hardware problems

One day, I had a problem with my school E-mail account which uses Pine and is like

so outdated. I was trying to send an attachment with the E-mail and they said it would not fit

since I had too much spaced used up already. They then went ahead and showed me

how to delete some messages and uneeded folders but I still didnt have enough room. Before I knew it the whole

clan was standing around telling me "yeah go ahead you dont need that one". After that,

my E-mail account stopped working and I couldnt even log in. It turns out they had me delete

the actual files that ran the program , and even worse one guy then said..."Well I think that

no matter what the attachment was too big." I could have screwed it up less myself.

This happened in the days when the Amiga was on its top.

I decided to sell my old Commodore 64. And placed an add in a newspaper. One of the callers was very interested in music and wanted a computer to play music on. I told him what hardware he would get when buying my C64, which included the cassette player (from the time before diskettes). He then asked me if the computer could play music.

me :Yes, i said.

him : And does it show them too ?

me : Show them ?

him : Yeah.. when u play a cassette, does it show them as well ?

me : uhh.. do you mean playing an audio tape ?

him : Yes... does it show the band playing on the screen ?

me (11 years old then) : tried my best to explain him what was possible and not.

He didnt want my C64...

We sell an add-on for a rather popular flight simulation game made by another company. One day I got a call from a woman who was very concerned. She'd started reading the standard license agreement that pops up during installation, and asked if this meant that she needed to have a pilot's license to use our program! Fortunately I have the ability to keep a straight face and tone no matter how silly the question is. What amazed me, though, is that she actually took the time to read the license agreement and *still* didn't understand what it meant.

Me: "Sir, are you familiar with a right mouse click?"

Customer: "Oh yeah, yeah- right mouse click."

Me: "OK, sir I want you to right click on My Computer."

Customer: "OK, just a second...... one moment... 'C'....

'L'"....

Me: "Sir, what are you doing?"

Customer: "Just a second.... 'I'.... 'C'....."

Me: "Sir, Sir, what are you doing?"

Customer: ( concentrating and pausing as if he was looking for

something) "OK- Done!"

Me: "Sir, what are you doing?"

Customer: "I just wrote 'click'"

NO WORD OF A LIE

I am a Computer Technician for a local Computer Repair Store... this happened about three weeks ago... the funnies and sickest converstation of my life:

Keep in mind... this is a face to face conversation.

Customer: i'm looking to upgrade my memory.

Tech Support: sure no problem... how much memory do you currently have?

Customer: i've got 32 megabites of R A M (spelled out)

(trying to make it look like he knows something)

Tech Support: ok.. how much memory are you looking to add?

Customer: i'd like to have a total of 64... so i'd like to add 32megabites more

Tech Support: ok... that doesnt seem to be much of a problem... i just need to ask you a few questions to determine what type of memory you need.

Customer: ok

Tech Support: how old is your computer

Customer: about 7 months

Tech Support: you bought this new right? a pentium series processor i presume?

Customer: yeah.. its a uhmmm.. D50200MMX... yeah.. thats it

Tech Support: ok sir.. go ahead and bring your computer in at your convience.. we can do this in probably around 10 minutes..

Customer: really? that fast? cool.. ok i'll get it now.

Customer: how much is this goona must me

Tech Support: well around $60 with labor

Customer: oh great.. i'll go get it

Customer: well' i just have a few question for you..

Tech Support: ok sure.. shoot..

Customer: welll..... i'm a little cautious because.. welll.. do you, can you will you look at the files on my computer?

Tech Support: what do you mean sir?

Customer: wellll... do you have to look at my computeeeer to do the job..

Tech Support: well of course sir... its an internal job.

Customer: well.. yess i know that.. i mean.. well i have some "private inforation on my computer"..

Tech Support: oh i think i know what your getting at.. (knowing he is thinkinng of porn)... i say "financial records etc.. correct?"

Customer: uhmmm ahhh YEAH! you know.. uhm hah huuu.. thats private..

Tech Support: no problem sir.. were in the business of fixin not snoopin..

Customer: well yeah i know that... just wondering.. i have those.. aggghhh ehemm.. financial records on there.. and..

Tech Support: no problem sir.. nooooo problem

Nevertheless.. he brings his computer in.... locked up with a keyboard lock and a bios password.... wonder whats in there eh?

Have a good one!

Absolutely true story......

I do tech support for a dental software company. This one

was explained to me by the user after the fact. This particular

dentist has his office in a small mall downtown.

User:Hi Simon

Me: Hi Helen how can I help you?

User:You;ll never guess what happened here yesterday

Me: Go On

User: Well my screen started making a ticking sound, so we

called security for the mall & they called the bomb squad.

Me: Pardon?

User:The bomb squad.

Me: And what happened?

User:Well they closed the mall & took the screen apart.

Me: Did they find anything?

User: No, but to day my screens not working today can you

bring me a new one please?

Upon receiving the error "Netscape has performed an

illegal operation" a customer sent the following email:

"Someone has sent me an illegal email. I know this because

my computer tells me so. And now when I try to delete it,

Netscape won't let me. What do I do? Do I call the police?"

While attending college to earn a degree in Computer Science

and Engineerning, I accepted a part-time student position in

the computer center at a local company. The job was mostly

trouble-shooting and help desk stuff.

During my first week, a client came into the office to tell

us she had a CD stuck in her computer. I had not had the

opportunity to become familiar with all the different

models and configurations of computers throughout the company,

so I dutifully followed the client to her office to assess the

situation.

I could hardly contain myself when I discovered her computer

did not have a CD-ROM drive. It did have a 5.25" floppy drive,

however, into which a CD was indeed stuck!

I work the support line for a software company. Our product line is used by newbies so we get a quite a few of the obvious newbie questions. Yesterday I got one that still has me wondering.

Here is a close rendition of the call

Me: Hello this is tech how can I help you?

Cust: Tell me that command to back up my computer

(we use Pkzip as a general rule to backup)

Me: Go to a Dos prompt and type Pkzip to see if you have the software installed.

Cust: You don't understand my ports all died and my A: drive crashed.

Me: (Trying to understand ) How did that happen?

Cust: That does not matter, Just tell me how to back up my data.

Me (realizing he is getting a little upset) OK go to the Dos prompt and type Pkzip and we will back up your data.

( not knowing how this is going to help him with no flopy drives or ports working to route it to)

Cust: You are not listening to me I don't need to use that command because I have the disk!

Me: You have the Disk?

Cust: Yah I just went out and bought 3 of those 120 meg 3 1/2" disks so I just want you to tell me how to copy my program to them so I can put it on another computer that works.

Me: Ohh you have a Zip drive.

Cust: Would you forget the Zip Drive stuff, the disks go into the regular drive slot, just tell me the Dos commands to back up my program!!

Me: (Beginning to realize that I am not going to win this one) Sir do you know the difference between a 3 1/2" flopy drive and a 3 1/2" Zip drive?

Cust: I'm getting tired of you treating me like I'm stupid tell me how to do this.

Me (thinking maybe I can show him the difference) OK Sir put your 120 meg disk in the floppy drive slot and I will give you the DOS command.

Cust: Ok but I'll have to call you back in a a while

Me: Why?

Cust: Cause I'm in my truck right now and I will have to go get my computer

In all honesty this call lasted probley 30 minutes I just gave you the Readers Digest version of the story.

What really blew my mind was that he spent the coin to call me on a cell phone for this.

He still has'nt called me back..

I'm a tech for a medium sized company and we have about 160

users. on day one of the accounting clerks came to my office and said

his monitor wasn't working so I went to check it out. Sure enough, the monitor

had died so I swapped it out with the same model type. About an

hour later I saw the clerk and he said thanks for fixing his monitor

and asked "So what did you have to do? Change the bulb?"

Uuhhhh......yeah.....that's what I did.

I never learned her name. She should be thankful of that.

She called for help on our database software. It was a 900

call. She was paying $2.49 a minute.

She couldn't open her database.

Me: Where did you put it on the computer?

Her: I don't know.

Me: What is your operating system?

Her: What's that?

Me: That's the software that makes your computer work.

Her: OH, I'm using Windows.

After a minute or so, I figured out it was Win 3.1/Dos 6.2

Me: Click on the word "file" at the top of the screen.

Her: OK.

Me: Now click on the word "exit" and press Ok when asked to

end your windows session.

Now type CD\ and press enter.

Her: Invalid command

I spent the next twenty minutes at $2.49 a minute trying

to make her understand what a backslash is.

This question was posted to a message board on my company's

web site about a year ago.

I'm a Mac user and I'm new to the PC and your database.

I am designing a mailing label.... How do I put a

space between the First and Last names.

My polite reply was to put her cursor between the two fields

and press the space bar.

Here's a new Jerry Springer topic:

"Idiots And The People Who Give Them Tech Support."

As my 9 to 5, I work in Internal Tech Support for a large corporation, not a great

job, but it pays the bills and I'm pretty good at it.

There's a reason for my job, a reason that was all too clear one Wednesday

afternoon.

At about 2:45 on that afternoon I received a call from one of our customers (a.k.a.

Users) asking how to print a screen from the phonebook program we use at our site.

The user, who for the sake of anonymity I'll refer to as... Moron*, wanted to be able

to print out the screen of the phonebook program so she could send it as proof of a

mistaken number... The reason why doesn't really matter, especially when the how is

so much more entertaining.

Now the Print Screen function of both Windows95 and Windows NT 4.0 is an

extremely simple to grasp (if not commonly known) concept... Hit ALT + PRINTSCRN

and then paste the resulting image into a graphics program such as Paint, and if you

want a hard copy of the window, you print it out, right... right?

Moron was unable to grasp this concept... I lost her somewhere at "Look at the

computer screen".

First was explaining that the window she wanted to print had to be "in front" of the

other windows... Okay, maybe I couldn't explain it very well... How could I? With

this loathsome beast's worried heavy breathing driving my eardrums to explosion?

When we finally made it through the frontal window dilemma, I asked her to hit

"alt+PrintScrn" at the same time... She asked what the "PrintScrn" key was... I explained

it was the key that had the words "Print Scrn" on it. After waiting for an affirmative

signal, maybe a grunt, from the user noting she had found the key, I asked her if she'd

found it. She replied:

"What?"

"The print screen key."

"Where is that?"

"On your keyboard."

For those of you paying attention, yes... that was the second time I explained the key

to her. She did finally find it though, after I'd left a trail of Reese's Pieces for her. I

think she gave up after trying to use one hand to hit the left 'alt' and the right-handed

"PrntScrn" button. Assuming Moron had understood, I attempted to lead her through

the rest of the process... My mistake.

Win95 and NT4.0 both utilize a Start button... You already know that because

you're reading this page which shows you know how to hit the switch to get the

biscuit, but this dullard would starve to death.

It took me explaining the location and function of the Start button no less than five

times!

"Oh!", she exclaimed happily. "You want me to point the mouse at it!"

I won't bore you with the details of actually opening Paint, but rest assured, it took

the better of five minutes (No, I'm not kidding).

Now she complained that she didn't want to paint anything, she wanted to print the

screen. I assured her that we were in the process of doing just that. She huffed and

resigned herself to paying attention... I can only assume smoke was beginning to

trickle out of her ears.

I had her click Edit-Paste. After saying Edit twice she got it... My hopes soared,

honestly believing that we had had a breakthrough. She found "Paste" on the first try.

Yes! Then a screen popped up;

"The image on the clipboard is larger than the bitmap. Would you like to enlarge the

bitmap?" or something to that effect.

I assured her she wanted to hit "Yes" and with much woe, she did so.

"Now what?" she asked.

I told her to click "File-Print". She did and put me on hold while she checked the

printer. She came back some seconds later to tell me nothing had come out. I asked

what was on her screen only to find that she hadn't okay'd her print job with the

"OK" button.

She came back and said it didn't print out. (At this point I did not know that she

hadn't hit Alt and PrintScrn at the same time).

I asked her where she sat and told her not to move, I was on my way down to see

her. (Actually I was afraid that if she moved she'd hurt herself).

I found her desk, hoping that she was at the very least attractive... Witty, something,

anything that would give her a reason to go on living. I found a mousy 6'3" woman

who was wider than she was tall, with the voice of a 12 year old. I sat at her desk

and performed this task for her, doing in one minute which had taken me fifteen

minutes of failed explanation just moments before.

Then she asked me to show her how I printed it out... I walked her though each

step... key by key, button by button, mild heart failure by mild heart failure. Then I

had her sit in front of her computer (by telling her to sit down... I didn't want to

explain the word "Computer" to her at that point) and try it herself. I should get a

fucking medal. After getting her to understand it was okay to hit Alt-PrintScrn at the

same time (maybe she thought she'd break the keyboard) we got into Paint (by my

pointing to each item on the screen). Here's the real kicker:

When we pasted the image of the captured window into paint... she tried six times to

click File-Print from the image! Even though I was pointing to the correct "File" on

the screen by touching the glass and repeating; "No, that's only a picture... this is the

program."

As I stood there, gazing at a screen obstructed by this behemoth, I felt my own

intellect being drawn from my head in a kind of lobotomy by osmosis.

Let it be known at this moment that I didn't openly laugh at her shenanigans at any

moment during this entire ordeal. Once she had printed the screen out I left her desk,

never to return, for if I ever see her name pop up on my phone again, its automatically

time for a smoke break.

Computer literacy is a touchy subject, not every "end-user" has the know-how to do

everything there is, and I have no problem with that. Know what you need to know...

works for me. But if you work in a high-tech computer research and development

company, as Moron does, I would think it best to bone up on the basics, such as

"Click Here" doesn't mean "Click There."

*Calling this waste of skin "Moron" is truly an insult to stupid people, my apologies.

This story, related to me by a collegue, is destined to

become a classic. (If I have anything to with it)

The names have been changed to protect us from liability and

from the stupid and/or insane.

To save time typing:

TS = Tech support

Cust = Customer

MS = Microsoft

I received a tech support call at the retail computer store

I work in.

TS: TS, This is Trevor, how can I help you.

Cust: My computer is smoking when I turn it on.

TS: Is it still smoking now.

Cust: Yes.

TS: Shut your computer off or it may catch fire.

Your power supply is blown. You need to bring it in

to be replaced.

Normally at this point the conversation would end and we'd

have a customer on his way to us with his PC. I wasn't so

lucky.

Cust: There has to be something I can do. Perhaps there is

a command that I can put in the Config.sys or maybe the

Autoexec.bat.

25 minutes pass while I politely tell him that software

cannot fix hardware problems like this one. Finally, I

can't take it anymore.... as my collegues are on the floor

laughing their lungs out.

TS: Ok.....ok, I'm not supposed to tell anyone this; but

some versions of DOS have a hidden program called

nosmoke.exe

I want you to edit your Autoexec.bat and type in the

following command:

C:\dos\nosmoke.exe

Save the file and reboot your computer. Is it still smoking?

Cust: Yes.

TS: Ok, you will need to call MS for an upgrade to their

nosmoke.exe. The current version you have isn't doing the

job.

Cust: OK, I'll do that.

Thinking that this is the last I would ever hear from him,

I happily passed the problem to MS.

About 4 hours later:

TS: TS, Trevor speaking, can I help you?

Cust: Remember me, we spoke this morning? You told me

to call MS for an upgrade to their nosmoke.exe.

TS: Uh, Uh..... yes. My stomach jumped to my throat and

my legs turned to jello.

Cust: MS says that their Nosmoke.exe is not compatable to

my computer. They said I have to have the Power Supply

replaced. I was wondering when I can bring in my computer

and how much it will cost.

I work for an automation systems integrator.

We installed a Novell 3.12 5-user network to run a DOS-based inventory-management program.

For *nine months* we didn't have any down-time at all... then the supervisor brought her daughter for "bring your daughter to work day."

Now, being responsible techs, we repeatedly recommended that the sever be placed in a locked cabinet.

The supervisor's daughter proved the validity of our recommendation -- she decided she liked how the power button worked...

Needless to day, that 5-yr old didn't down the server first :P

We spent almost two days rebuilding that server (which they hadn't backed up for over a month.) :-/

Funny, though... they now have the server locked in a cabinet in a secure room :)

Some of my favorite tid bits:

1. "When is the Internet going to arrive at my home?"

2. "What do you mean I have to have a computer?"

3. "Why do I need a modem, aren't you going to deliver the Internet for me?"

4. "Are you guys off the air?"

Customer : This is John from the Secret Service, what's our password?

T Support: We need to verify that you are the account holder, please ...

Customer : I just told you I'm with the Secret Service, why can't you give me the password?

T Support: That wouldn't be secure sir, you could be anyone.

This goes on for several more minutes before we can verify who he is. He was a Secret Service agent, just new to that office. Unfortunately he wasn't too clear on the concept of security. Then he wanted to change the password to the username. *sigh*

Our all time favorites are "professional" web developers. Their questions range from how to use FTP to how to "imbed" their graphics in their HTML.

I had never been impressed with the technical support people at the ISU helpdesk, and I became even less impressed after this event. I guess it's not surprising when you understand that they only pay minimum wage (I had applied once while I was at school there, but then turned them down when I found out what they paid). I've had over 15 years working with computers and I am currently a salaried computer professional.

My sister in law was needing to get a project done for Quattro at the computer lab. She didn't want to be spending her time in the lab, plus I had a much nicer and faster computer than the lab had, so I told her she could do the project at my place. I had found earlier in the year that the school had very lax security and you could actually connect to the network through dial-up networking and access any server on campus that your login had access to (which was about half of them). The file that she needed was on the "p:" drive on the computer lab computers, which meant that it was mapped out to some server on the network. Having access to the network from outside I could get to the server, but I had no idea which server and directory the "p:" drive was. If I could find out which server and what drive and directory it was she would be able to work on my computer, so I called the help desk to find out.

That was my mistake.

I briefly explained that I was looking for professor so-an-so's quattro project and I needed to know what server it was on so that we could work it at home. He brilliantly responded

tech: "It's on drive p:".

me: "Ok, so where is drive p: mapped to?"

tech: "It's just on drive p:"

me: "yeah, I know, but drive p is just a drive mapping. When you go to drive p on the workstation it actually takes you to a certain server and a certain drive and directory on that server. I need to know what that location is."

tech: "All you have to do to get the program is to go to drive p: and run the program"

by this time I was getting frustrated. I don't think that he knew much about networking.

me: "Ok, here's what you can do for me. Go to one of the computers and log in. When you log in it will list a whole bunch of drive letters and where they are being mapped. It will say that drive p is being mapped to a certain server and location. If you can tell me that location I would be very happy"

tech: (click)

As it turned out I just went with my sister in law to the computer lab and she just decided that since we were already there that she may as well do it there. I was a little ticked because I had actually watched the drives being mapped when I log in and I knew exactly how to find the mappings

Oh, these are the same people that give me funny looks when I ask for a bottle of rubbing alcohol every time that I use one of their computers. They NEVER clean the ball of the mouse on any of the computers so it's almost impossible to get a mouse that functions well. Cleaning the ball makes it work so much better.

(sigh)

I work as a computer engineer for a local college, these are the two best problems I have ever come accross.

1: I went on a routine call to a monitor frozen, the meeting went a little like this.

Me: What seems to be the trouble?

Cust: My monitor has frozen

Me: Your monitor can't freeze, I think your PC has locked up

Cust: No it is defenatly my monitor, look nothing moves on screen.

Me: Yes but the signal comes from the computer to your monitor via a computer cable. It is you computer that tells your monitor what to display on screen.

Cust: You are just not listening to me are you, I said it is my monitor not my computer.

Me: I know what you said but with respect, it is your computer and not your monitor, you need to reset your PC.

Cust: You are wrong it can't be my PC because the little green light is on.

Me: That is your power light to show that your computer is turned on. With that I reset her PC and everything worked fine.

Floppy Disk

2: We had a call booked in that a floppy drive was not working.

I went down to check it out, when I arrived an asked the person what was wrong with the floppy drive they explained,

their must be something stuck in it because the disk will not go in.

I ask him to show me, which he did.

I then took the disk off him turned it around and placed it into the drive, thus it went straight in.

Tech assisting user configure communications software telephonically -

Tech: Do you know the brand name of your modem?

User: Yeah, it says US Robitics SPORTSBAR 28.8...

At this point tech had to hit mute while he giggled thinking of benefits of a sportsbar modem. . .

I had stumbled across a deal on an old PC-CD drive. This was an earlier cartridge based re-writable CD technology. The drive was only $30, but I needed cartridges for it. I drove to a local computer superstore and headed towards the upgrades counter.

I asked the guys manning the counter if they had PC-CD cartridges. To their credit, they knew what I was talking about and had the items in stock. However the price was $65 a piece.

Me: "Thanks, but that's a little out of my budget"

Tech: "Yeah, well, the technology was a little ahead of it's time. Now since no one uses, the disks are expensive."

Me: "I suppose."

Tech: "It's kind of like EDO."

Me thinking: "EDO memory? You mean the kind of memory that almost every Pentium in existence accepts."

I say: "What?"

Tech: "Exactly."

Me: "You mean EDO memory right?"

Tech: "Yep. So you remember it too, huh? A little ahead of it's time. Now nothing uses it."

Me: "Um, I think you're mistaken. Almost every Pentium on the market will take EDO memory."

Tech: "No way. We have to put fast page mode memory in all the Pentiums people bring in."

Me: "Right..." as I walk away thinking, "Idiot."

I do tech support for a (H)igh (P)erformance company. Read that sentence again find out who:)

I often have time between calls to surf and bs with fellow cow-orkers. Unfortuneately, calls can come in at any time. It is something of a black art determining who will be the next "lucky winner" when a group of three or four of us aren't on a call.

I have found that there are 10 sure-fire ways to be the next person to receive a call:

10. Pick your nose.

9. Take your headset off to scratch your ears.

8. Tell a coworker what you think of the last caller

("why that stupid #$#! idiot couldn't tell his head from his (beep - beep) Hello, and thank you for calling..")

7. Begin a really interesting conversation with your neighbor about politics, women(/men), religion(/OSes), or who makes the best browser.

6. Pull out a stick of gum or piece of candy and begin chewing.

5. Think about last night (whether it was good or bad)

4. Start to answer a question from a fellow tech

3. Write mail to a friend or loved one.

2. Gawk at the cute blonde over the cubicle wall

1. Enter a chatroom.

I always wondered why there were so many chess boards at work. Now I know. (It's a turn based game)

-WhizzMan

I once had a user come by my office to complain about her

printer not working.

She said she was "@#$% fed up with the #@$% thing not

working" and she demanded I do something about it now!

I quietly got up and followed her to her printer, turned the

power on and returned to my desk without saying a word.

I was working for a computer company about 4 years ago, when I got a call from a woman with a printer problem.

Woman: My printer won't print anything.

Me: (After verifying that it was turned on and plugged in correctly) Let's try to print something.

Woman: O.K. I'll try to print, but I've been doing this for an hour.

Me: What are you printing from?

Woman: Windows Write. SEE! It's doing it again.

Me: What's it doing?

Woman: It won't print. It just cancels the job.

Me: O.K. Click print again, and tell me exactly what you see on the screen.

Woman: It says 'now printing page 1' and the only thing I can do is hit 'cancel'!

Me: O.K. Hold on... What does it say at the top of the window?

Woman: 'File', 'Edit'... OOOH!!!! IT'S PRINTING!!! What did we do??

Me: We didn't hit the 'CANCEL' button this time!!

Needless to say, she was QUITE embarassed!

This happened to a co-worker of mine while I was doing tech support for packard bell computers.

Now in case you don't know, packard bell computers have a video BIOS image of "the packard bell guy" in the upper left hand corner that is displayed during the boot process.

So anyways, he takes the call, "thank you for calling PB" such and such, and gets her name, and finds out that she's athsematic, and is gasping a little for breath. He gets right to the point and asks what's wrong, the response, which had us in stitches for days:

"Gasp! *Pant*, *Pant*, The man is too big!!! *gasp*, Pant, pant*"

`;)

I used to work for a national chain of electronics stores and would occasionally go out to customer's homes (on the side) to look at their computers when they had trouble. One lady was having trouble with her new video card and lived near the store, so after work I went to her house and proceeded to diagnose the problem. Nothing I tried would work, and I noticed the system wouldn't POST (it should at least beep even if there's no display) so I finally did what I should have at first and asked what the last thing she did was. She said she inserted the card into the slot according to the instructions, and there was a bright blue spark... It turns out she didn't know she was supposed to turn the computer off first, and she fried both the video card and the motherboard.

I have a Small Computer Business in Eugene, OR. One Morning about 9AM, My pager goes off.

"Hi. It's (call him Tom) from *****. I have a question about a feature on a system I bought from you. Call Me at ***-****.(Click)"

Usually when someone calls about a feature, it seems they found a bug that they want me to fix. Grrrr.....

And Tom was a former Mac User who I had brought into the wonderful world of the x86 Platform. Returning his call shortly, we chatted for a moment, and I asked him how his system was working.

Me: What seems to be the Problem?

Tom: Oh... I was wondering if the speakers made any noise?"

Me: I installed a sound card and speakers for you. We went over everything.

Tom: Not those speakers. The speaker inside the PC.

Me: Um.... The only speakers on that system are the ones attached to the sound card.

Tom: No.... I mean the one that is inside the case.

Me: Oh. It's only supposed to beep when you boot up the computer or there is a problem. Is it beeping at you when you do someting?

Tom: No. I just wanted to see if I could use that speaker to play my CD's.

Me: You used to own a Mac didn't you?

Turns out that Tom's previous computer (a Macintosh) Played audio out of the system speaker. After (once again) explaining that's why I installed a sound card for him, he went on his merry way.

Gotta love those Mac users.

I am the sys admin for a small company. I periodically e-mail updates to our software in the form of self-extracting zip files. In these e-mails, I include a set of instructions on how to install the update.

On day, one of our CSRs called complaining that he couldn't get the update to install. Everytime he clicked the "No" button to the backup message, nothing would happen. After going over a few troubleshooting steps, I asked him what his mouse pointer looked like when he moved it over the buttons. He said that it didn't change. A little confused, I asked, "Change from what?" "A capital I." A couple more questions revealed that the CSR was not actually starting the update software, but was trying to click the "No" button on a picture I had inserted in to the instructions.

The odd entry in the support suggestion emails read "User requests that Command Buffer be reduced."

Back in my salad days at (company), half of the building was using a God-awful LAN package that was extremely outdated (it was designed for up to seventy-five users at once, and we had about four hundred.) In the mornings, when everyone tried to log in, it often stalled completely for upwards of ten minutes. Now, during this time, you could still put in commands--and we often had problems caused by frustrated users who clicked at random on the screen, hoping to cause a reaction.

The worst case we saw (and the one that prompted the above call), was one poor lady who:

*Printed _twelve_ copies of a twenty-page document

*Closed MS Word (without saving, of course)

*Delete two of her new emails, then closed _that_ program

*Went into MS-DOS and logged herself off the network without following the various "safe log-off" procedures.

Apparently, the tech who helped her needed to pacify her a bit, and told her that there was something called a "command buffer" that "held your inputs until the system could process them". People liked this better than just plain "It's slow, be patient."

Well, luckily I didn't call for help with this one, otherwise our tech support would have sent in this story. I am not a tech, but am very capable for troubleshooting and installing software and hardware.

Anyway, one day my (very solid) Kensington mouse starts acting up. It clicks occasionally for no apparent reason. Ex: I'd be typing near the bottom of the screen, the mouse suddenly clicks for no reason, now I am typing right where I left the pointer, maybe 3 inches higher on the screen or something. I check the software, consider calling the techs, consider calling Kensington for a replacement mouse (never did call, thank god). So I wait. For a month, no less, all the time wondering what the hell is going on. Finally, I bump the cord attached to the mouse one day and notice it is loose. Plug it back in properly and, AMAZING, no more unusual clicking of the mouse.

Hmmm, maybe I should've tried that a month earlier. Well, if you can't laugh at yourself.....

MY NAME IS PATRICK ANDERSON, AND I WORK TECH SUPPORT FOR A MAJOR

COMPUTER CORPORATION, (LOT'S OF GRASS & COWS)

I TOOK A CALL FROM AN OLDER GENTLEMAN WHO WANTED TO KNOW WHY HIS CD ROM WAS NOT

WORKING. I SAID "OK", AND STARTED A BASIC TROUBLESHOOTING PROCESS.

THE FIRST THING I ASKED HIM, WAS TO PRESS THE TRAY EJECT BUTTON ON THE DRIVE.

HE REPLIED, "WHAT BUTTON?" I THOUGHT THAT SINCE HE HAD JUST AQUIRED HIS

BRAND NEW(ANCIENT) 386/25, THAT MAYBE HE NEEDED A LITTLE HELP FINDING THE BUTTON

I ASKED HIM TO FIND A BUTTON ON THE "CD-ROM" DRIVE...

HE COULDN'T FIND IT. AFTER A LITTLE PAUSE IN CONVERSATION, HE TELLS ME THAT

THE ONLY THING HE SEES, IS A LEVER!

NOW THAT STUMPED ME FOR A MINUTE, I THOUGHT HMMMMM? LEVER?

THE GUY HAD MANAGED TO SQUEEZE A CD ROM INTO A 5 1/4 FLOPPY DRIVE!!!

HE HAD TAKEN ABOUT A HALF AN HOUR TO FIT THAT LEVER THROUGH THE CD'S HUB.

TELLING THE GENTLEMAN THAT THIS WAS NOT A CD-ROM IS ANOTHER STORY ALTOGETHER...

This is an incident which occured when I was manning a network

helpdesk in the good old days of IBM "loop" attached equipment.

Each 4700 type terminal is attached to the following one in

the loop by a "wrap unit loop box" which had has a three way

switch. Normal operation, internal unit test and loop test.

When errors occured on the ring this unit, which was commonly

situated under the users counter, was used as a means of

problem determination in order to isolate the point of failure.

A call came in from a user to say that all her terminals were

down.

Hmmm. Ok Ma'm, please check your wrap unit to see if the loop

light is on solid or is flashing.

I can't do that!

Why not?

I can't get under the counter.

Horrors! I had my worst nightmare - a very pregnant lady, or

did I?

Why's that Ma'm?

Well I'm up to my knees in water - we just had a cloud burst

you know.

We lost it at this point I'm sorry to say and rather abruptly

told her to get the devil out of there before she electrocuted

herself.

Earlier today we got a rash of callbacks from people that

had gotten the wrong number for our mailorder group, and we

were curious about what the wrong number was so we called it

ourselves. Turns out that the phone number was the local water

utilities office.

I work tech support for a small ISP. When customers call in for help, our receptionist gets their information, then transfers them to us. Ten minutes to quitting time, she tells me she's sending me a call. "Sorry, this one's going to be a doozy. I asked him if he had a Mac or a PC, and he said, "Laptop"."

I was in CompUSA this weekend with a buddy of mine looking

at the PDA's and a guy walks up to the counter to ask the

clerk a question. He asks the clerk why they do not have

any PCI modems that are not Winmodems. The clerk responded

that PCI is made for Windows, and PCI only works with Windows.

At this point my buddy and I looked at each other and laughed

as the befuttled consumer walked away scratching his head.

My buddy leans over to me and says "that's funny, my Sparc

at work has a PCI bus".

DaBuzz

http://www.DaBuzz.net

Ok, for a while ago i worked at an ISP in Atlanta and i just

have to tell about a story that is "sadly enough" true.

One day a guy calls and says he want to open an account

with us. I asked for his adress so i could send an application

to him, so he could write down the information about himself

and send back to us. After that he asked what the requirements

was. I said: To get connected with our modems you also have

to have a modem yourself. Do you have a modem ?

He ansvers: no i dont.

I say: I suggest you go to your local computer shop and

ask them what kind of modem they think you should buy.

Also buy a modem that is upgradeable.

He says: Ok i will. I will also send back the forms to you.

**We hang up**

1 week later.

This person calls again and i don't answer (too bad, my

day off). A friend at the office talks to him and asks what

his name is, and takes the papers to his desk.

First our techie says: I need to ask you a few questions so

i can help you better to get you online so you can start

"surfing" the web.

Customer replies: Ok, shoot.

Techie: What OS do you have ?

Customer says: OS ?

Techie: Yea, operating system, like windows 3.xx or windows95

or even Machintosh maybe..

Customer replies: Hmm, i dont know, how do i check.

Techie: ( hmm, is he stupid or just making fun of me)

Ok, you can do like this. You look at your screen and tell

me what it looks like. Like if you have a little button

to the left bottom of your screen that says: "Start", then

you got windows 95. If it does not have that and says

"Program manager" at the top, you got the old windows 3.xx.

Or if you have got an Apple on your computer, you got a

machintosh.

Customer replies: Hmm, you're confusing me. Screen, what's that ?

Techie: Ok, the screen is what you look at.(starting to feel

rather annoyed at this new customer)

Customer: Ok, This is nothing i got. You are talking about

some equipment or whatever it is, that i don't have. What a

techie from your company said was: All that i need to start

surfing is a modem. I went to the store and got a modem, now

i want to surf the web.

Techie: (Laffing so hard he almost is falling of the chair)

Hmm ok. This is the deal. That techie thought you had a

computer, because a computer is what you need to use that

modem.

Customer speaks up: No, i should not use a "computer" or what

it was you said, ONLY thing i need is a modem to communicate

with you guys he said.

Techie: Ok. Enough. I want you to go to the computer store

again and ask them the same thing, If you need a computer

to surf with. Also we will hold this papers for you, and when

you are ready we activate the account. As for now, you can not

surf the web without a computer to place the modem in. Please

call us when you are ready again, and we will be happy to

help you out getting started.

Customer replies: Ok.

Conversation ends here..

Lots of lafs was in that office that day, they were using

the speakerphone after a while so everyone else could hear

the rest of the customers stupid talking.

Caller: I have lost all my clipart from my word processor.

Tech: Which Word Processor?

Caller: Word.

Tech: Which version of Windows are you using?

Caller: Office v4.

Tech: What do you see on your screen when after your PC has finished starting up?

Caller: Office.

Tech: Close Office and tell me what you see on the screen.

Caller: A box in the middle of the screen, two telephones wide and a woman's arm high ... well not a whole arm, just from my wrist to my elbow.

Tech: Are you sure there are no icons?

Caller: No, definitely no icons. Would it help if I went back to Program Manager?

Tech: (mute) *$$%@!!!

I work as a software engineer. We assist our partners through a software called Timbuktu, that allows us to take over their mouse.

This happened to a colleague of mine:

C: Are you in Timbuktu?

P: No, I am in Stockholm...

I was waiting in line at Radio Shack a few weeks ago. There was an old man holding an 8mm film camera. On the desk, were some 8mm video tapes. The sales man was ringing up the video tapes when I ask the man if he was going to use the tapes in his camera. The man said "yes" while the sales man looked at me with a "mind you own business" look. I explained to them that the man's camera needed film and the video tape would not work. The man did not buy the tape, but they were both quite confused.

Last month, David Oberpriller had a few complaints about tech support he'd received (or hadn't, according to him). Let's take a closer look at his story:

)I am not a tech support person...

...nor has he worked as one, or he wouldn't have submitted this.

)[snip a description of how to properly make a Mac network]

)...so I got some advice from a co-worker who told me that I could just use a printer cable to connect the two Macs.

Isn't this how it always starts? A friend or co-worker gives some well-meant but ill-informed advice, and off they go.

David, did you realize that just because a plug fits, it isn't necessarily meant to go somewhere? By your logic we'd all have marbles permanently lodged in our noses. Anyway, in this case, you're REALLY lucky that the computers weren't supplying power across the same pins - that happens in real life, and tends to result in two broken computers.

)(cheap at under $10, much less than AppleTalk/PhoneNet connectors)

Again, as always, the customer's ingeniously invented a cheap way to avoid paying full price. You know the syndrome: "How come my $60 56K modem won't connect faster than 28.8? Your system must be lousy."

)Well, the salesman started questioning why I wanted the cable...

Yes, we're trained to save users from their best-laid plans.

)(he refused to sell me the cable--don't you wish the salesmen today were as honest?)

Absolutely! My life would be SO MUCH easier!

)I let him join in the "explanation" for a minute or two till I just got frustrated and played my "ace-in-the-hole"

Why, why, WHY do users do this to us? Are they under the impression that being blind-sided by new and relevant information is going to make us more likely to go out of our way to be nice? Hint: Unless you enjoy repeating such activities as rebooting, re-installing software, re-installing hardware, and spending a lot of time on hold, don't ever do that again.

)I ended the discussion with, "If you people are going to be selling and repairing these things, you really ought to learn about them first--before you talk to customers."

This is guaranteed to get prompt, accurate service on the future calls and/or visits. Not. See above.

)Sometimes it is enjoyable to turn the tables on the supposedly "techno-savvy."

One last piece of advice: toying with us is like toying with your IRS agent. You may come out ahead in the short-term, but you don't win any prizes.

Just my $.02.

OH I am in a beauty of a call right now:

She's experiencing basic connection problems on Windows 95. She just

upgraded from Windows 3.11 so you know we have a winner here...

And don't you tech support guys & gals just *love* it when

users click on things you don't tell them to... *shudder*.

I got this lady lost at "Double click on My Computer."

Response: "It's not working."

Me:"What is not working?"

Her: My computer...

Me: Just keep trying, then double click on DialUp Networking...

(This continues for awhile as I step thru the procedure for DUN)

Me: Okay, now under TCP/IP, starting at the top you should

see the option 'Server assigned IP address'? It should have a little

dot in the circle is that correct?

Her: Yes.

Me: Now looking down you should see a dot in the circle in 'Specify

Name Server addresses'.

Her: No, it not there...

Me: Ok, you'll need to put a dot in there...

Her: Okay... oh, I clicked on that and the other dot went away...

Me: Okay you clicked on the wrong button. Click back on 'Server Assigned

IP Address'... (*sigh*)

...

(This goes on as I get her to fix up DUN, I then get her to go to

networks - play around with TCP/IP and Dialup Adapter a couple of times.

She resets the machine).

Her: Oh no, all these programs are open... I didn't open them!!!...

Me: NO no... they're open from before, when you restarted the machine

after closing Networks. Don't worry about it...

Me: Now I'll get you to connect. Double click on My Computer.

Her: It's not working...

Me: What do you mean, it's not working?

Her: It's come up with this window, Open, Explore...

Me: No, no you've right clicked. You will need to click with the left mouse button...

...

(I get her to connect - she's got a dedicated line)

Her: What do I do now that I'm connected?

Me: What do you mean?

Her: What do I do now?

(Me, groaning inwardly when I realise that she wants to know how to do

basic shit)

Me: I can't teach you how to use the Internet. You'll have to learn

how to do that yourself... my best advice is for you to get a good

book on the subject, on how to use your computer and use the Internet.

Do you see the Internet icon on your desktop?

Her: ??? (pause)

Me: The icons on your desktop?

Her: (long pause)

Me: The small pictures on your screen...

Her: Ummm...

Me: You should see several icons, labelled My Computer, Network Neighborhood... could you read out what else there is please...

Her: Oh..umm... Recycling Bin, The Internet, My Briefcase...

Me: Double click on the Internet....

Her: (she starts prattling like she wants someone to baby sit her through the whole bloody thing, which I'm not going to)

Me: You're connected, everything is up and running. If you have any

more problems, give us a call.

Her: Thanks..

Me: Bye.

(CLICK!)

User: My keyboard isn't working.

Me: It isn't working?

User: Yeah, it's unplugged at the back.

Me: OK, reach round and plug it back in.

User: OK (does this)

Me: Try it now.

User: Yeah, it's working now.

Like many techs, I often recieved calls from customers who had trouble performing things at the correct speed...

Me: Okay, now double-click on the icon.

Them: (click...click) Nothing happened...

Me: Try clicking faster, sir.

Them: (click) Nothing's happening!

Me: No, it has to be two separate clicks...

Them: Why do they have to make this so hard!

A related story was one lady who complained that her computer kept repeating keystrokes--_all_ the keystrokes she typed were multiplied. As it turned out, her old keyboard had been sticky and required extra force to press the keys--so she'd pound on the keys one at a time and usually end up holding down on them.

While waiting in line at the BestBuy Customer Service, the guy in front of me was returning an entire PC system... including Monitor and Printer. The boxes all stacked-up and re-taped shut. When he got up to the desk, he said "I need to exchange this computer for a new one, this one does have enough rams."

One day I was eating lunch in the company kitchen. The (unnamed executive) comes in, looking for me. He is holding a bunch of sheets of paper, and he said "I've been sent a WORD document via Email and I can't read it." I say "tell me more about who sent you the document?" He said "The document is from France, can you just install the French version of MS WORD on my system, so I can read the document?" I say, "No, because the French version of MS WORD is for French people in France, and you need someone who can read French to translate the document into English. He said "Oh shit, never mind", and leaves.

I received a call from a co-worker, who I had I personally configured their system. They told me that they could not install XXX software. I asked them to tell me everything that they had done, up this point. As it turned out, they had purchased the software "On CDROM", and did not have a CDROM drive on the system. They inserted the CDROM into the 5 1/4 floppy drive. And could not get the SETUP to execute from the (non existent) D: drive. Adding to the mess, they could not get the CDROM out of the floppy drive. I helped them to get the CDROM out of the drive. Needless to say, but the CDROM was badly scratched.

I love people that majored in marketing. I aleays get a kick out of

some of the things that they come out with.One fine day, this women in marketing asked me if I

could provide a spare laptop computer because she had left hers at home. So I gave her an NEC

Versa and hooked her up to the network, then went back to my desk. About a half

hour goes by when my phone rings. It's was the marketing woman again. She said she had trouble accessing the network

and would I mind if I could look at it. I trot back and start examining the connection. Everything checks out. Checked

Windows to see what was up. Everything is cool. I said "Look. this is fine. I see no problem here." She replies " I can't get to my C drive.

Huh? I assured her that the host drive was fine, but she says "No, I mean the C drive on my computer at home. How come I can't access it from here?"

I have one customer who is just unreal. He has been

working with computers since the original IBM PC's came

out (or so he says.) I arrive on site to help in properly

install and setup his new Internet connection, as I was

unable to talk him through the connection over the phone.

When I arrived here is what I found...

1) His computer was a clone system he had built himself...

it contained 2 modems, both assigned the same I/O address

and same IRQ, one was a Creative Labs Modem Blaster 28.8

modem/sound card completely integrated as 1 unit, and could

not be jumper changed, you could only change the I/O & IRQ

with software, and it would only use IRQ 3 or 4, nothing else.

The other was the new Digital USR 33.6 DSP Modem, the

customer was under the impression he could use this modem

to talk to me and connect to the Net simultaneously, while

using our ISDN service. I quickly cleared up the issue of

ISDN, talking & connecting (30 minutes). He also needed

both internal serial ports for mice (yes mice as in 2 mice

connected simultaneously - 1 for left hand and 1 for right

hand, so he could switch when one hand got tired) and

the second for a scanner or LapLink cable to his LapTop.

I finally convinced him he only needed 1 modem so I disabled

the Modem Blaster. And set up the software for Win 3.1.

2) His system consisted of a 250M SCSI HD, a 500M IDE HD,

a 350M IDE HD, a 1G SCSI HD, 2 SysQuest SCSI Drives, and

a SCSI CD-Rom Changer. Each Hard Drive had no less than 3

partitions on it. Drives were lettered from C through P,

while the CD-Roms were drive letter U-Z. He insisted on

keeping at least 3 working copies of all information, for

instance Drive C was his main boot disk, Drive G was his

backup copy of his main boot Disk, Drive D was his data Disk

and Drive F was his backup Data Disk. While he also kept 2

copies on SysQuest Drives. I later learned, that he had

over 15 copies on the same old DOS programs (from 3.3)

scattered throughout his system.

3) His system was a multi-boot system. He was trying to run

DR-Dos Multi-User version, MS-DOS 6.22, and Win NT 3.51.

He insisted on using Multi-Mate, and WordStar in DR-Dos,

because he could have multiple copies running simultaneously.

I told him, and showed him how he could make these programs

run in Windows Dos Prompts just as nicely, but he insisted

that he knew better and would not use Windows for those

programs, and he could not make WP6.0 for Windows, and Quatro

Pro do the work he had been doing for so long in DOS. So

I let him keep the old DR-Dos program, but I cleaned his

hard drives up. I reformatted all drives, reinstalled all

OSes, had everything working correctly, all he had left to

do was copy back in his data files from his SysQuest drives,

which he assured me he could do with no problems. I left.

24 hours later, his system was no longer working, it would

not even boot. I asked him what he changed, he said "nothing"

I just copied the data files back in. So I started all over

again, it turns out, he did not like the idea that Win NT

preferred 32bit fat and DOS/Windows/Dr-Dos could not read,

see, or modify the drive, and Win NT reassigned "His drive

letters". So he change the partitions using "Partition Magic"

software to make the 32bit Fat an 8 bit Fat. And I found

out that his "backup" SysQuest disks *ALL* contained multiple

copies of command.com, and other DOS command from ver

PC-DOS 1.0 through and including MS-DOS 6.22 scattered in

along with the "data files", needless to say, as he was

"cleaning" his data directories, rather than delete these

old files, he would copy them to the root directory of each

drive partition, and to the DOS directory, so he could have

"backup copies". Needless to say, it wasn't a pretty site.

The story gets better...Win95 comes out, and he wants 95 as

ANOTHER OS on the system along with the other 4 boot options.

I flattly tell him it is impossible, it won't work. He says

it will, and proceeds to try it using "System Commander" to

try and make all OS boot correctly. To get a long story a

little shorter, I finally convince him, 1) Win NT is not for

him, as he has no true 32bit programs he needs to run; 2)

DR-Dos is no longer needed. I think I finally have him

where I wnat him down to 2 OSes Win95 & Dos---I have numerous

customers successfully running Multi-Boot Dos/Win95. WRONG.

24 hrs later, I get a call Win95 won't boot, and neither will

DOS, he can only boot from a Floppy. On-Site I reload again

and leave, no conversations, just work and go. system is

now fully operational again...again I get a call 24hrs later

system won't boot. I go out, reload again, and walk thru

all steps he did both times....

Here are his steps...see if you can spot where his problem is

1) load all data back onto system

(Nope I cleaned all old DOS program files from all SyQuest disks)

2) backed up each of his drive letters to SyQuest Disk and "mirror hard disk partition"

3) worked on system, the in Win95 accidentally deleted some

shortcuts, so he restored data from one of his backups, only

to find that the system was worse than before, so he would

restore more files, each time making it worse until it

would no longer boot.

Can you figure out his mistake, it took me about an hour to

find it...remember he started out on IBM PC's with DOS only

and learned how to use batch files from DOS!

He had DOS backup utilities he created that would copy files

from 1 location to 2 other locations, and he would boot from

Dos 6.22 and execute these batch files in DOS mode on Win95

long file names and shortcuts, ie. Win95 long file names

were lost, nothing worked.

He is now creating his on web site, and constantly messing

that up too. He can not understand why when he works on his

system in DOS/Win3.x the pages work fine, but when uploaded

to the internet, it does not work...I have told him several

times, to no avail, he has to use upper & lowercase letters

very carefully. You see, he sometimes loads and works on

files in DOS, sometimes in Win3.x, and sometimes in Win95,

and then he uploads them to Unix. In Dos/Win3.x case is

not relevant to file names, Win95 tracks case for readability

and sends them to Unix in mixed case, but Unix is very

sensitive about mixed case file names. I usually have to

remind him about 2 times a month about being case sensitive.

Just last week, he sent me an email saying "I wiped all the

files in my directory, and reloaded all files...Why isn't

my page working...Guess...all files were in lowercase, and

the references in the home page were in all UPPERCASE.

By the way, this customer is a Professional Engineer with

several degrees.

A Few friends and I are Employeed by an Outsource Firm For a Prominant Mail Order Computer Firm in the U.S. One of my friends recieved this call a Few weeks ago...

CSR: Thank you for calling Technical Support, my name is ____ Badge # _______, May I have you phone number begining with the area code?

Client: I have one quick question,

CSR: That is alright ma'am but before I....

Client: Boxers or Briefs?

CSR: What?!?!

Client *Click*

Tech: Yada yada yada... What can I help you with?

EU: I have been copying files onto a floppy disk and now I am getting a message that the floppy drive is not accessible.

Tech: Ok, well you said that you were copying files to the disk and then you got this message, is that right?

EU: That's right I have copied many files and now all I can get is this error.

Tech: Well, have you tried more than on disk?

EU: Yes, they all give me the same message.

Tech: Ok, which disk is in there now?

EU: There isn't one in there now.

Tech: Ok, well that is the problem. It is telling you that because there is nothing in the drive to be read. You have to put a disk in the drive before you can read it.

EU: I don't think that is right.

Tech: How do you mean?

EU: Well, how come I can read my C drive without putting in a disk?

Tech: Uh...

I got a call once from a very irate lady. She started off by saying what a terrible computer she had bought and that she wanted to return it. She went on to say that she knew all about computers because she uses them at work. I asked her what seemed to be wrong with the system. She said that she got the system today and hooked everything up with no problem. (She was obviously an experienced user.) She was mad because she turned on the system and started playing a game that she couldn't win. She said, "I have been playing this damn CMOS game for over an hour and I can't win! I can't exit! I can't do anything!" I replied, "The CMOS game?" How can you explain what CMOS is to someone like that?

Sigh. This is really a doozie!

Email from a customer:

Dear {Certain Southern ISP},

We are going to have a second phone line put in for our computer. What

steps do we need to take in order to switch our account over to the new

phone number? And do we have to pay to have the acount swithced? Thank

your {name withheld to protect the idiot}

***

Sigh. I told her, just move the computer to the new line, and conduct business as normal.

But nnnnnnnooooooo.......... she emailed back with:

But what about recieving my e-mail? I thought it came to the phone number.

***

Oh man, Oh man, Oh man -- getting email on the phone is a noble idea... but....

- Scott A. Steinbrink

Here's a reconstruction of the dialog that occurred when I tried to obtain a little tech support yesterday--

Tech: Hello, [company], how can I help you?

Self: Hi. I installed your NetBios-over-TCP/IP solution on my computer at work and again on the one at home a couple of weeks ago, and it worked great at first, I could dial up my ISP and mount my shared folders and drives from work on my computer's desktop at home.

Tech: OK, then what happened?

Self: Well, the NT Server crashed at work and of course assigned a different TCP address to all the computers when it came back up, and ever since then, I can "see" my work computer when I click the network icon, but when I try to access it, I get a message saying a NetBIOS error occurred.

Tech: How is your TCP address assigned?

Self: Well, at work, it's DHCP, the NT Server hands out TCP addresses to all the connected boxes. At home I don't have that, so I clicked WINS instead. I have the server's address listed for primary name server and my own computer's most recently assigned address for secondary.

Tech: Well, that won't work. Since your computer at work isn't on a WINS system, you can't connect that way.

Self: But it worked fine for a week!

Tech: Well, it shouldn't have, so I can't help you.

Self: There must be some type of database that [your product] was accessing, which didn't update to the new addresses when the Server reassigned our addresses, but I don't know where it is so I can't delete or edit it.

Tech: No, what you're trying to do won't work.

Self: How do you suppose [product] was able to obtain the information? Any idea?

Tech: It wasn't supposed to work, so there's nothing wrong with it not working now, so I can't help you.

I used a service's web site for support on 3 different occasions and received very relevant, prompt responses each time. Since I have been in a support role much of my career, I decided that an "atta-boy" would be apprecicated by the staff there ... they were obviously reading the email to be able to respond with information so relevant to my issues. I hit "reply" to the most recent email to send my "atta-boy" and got back a form letter stating, "In checking our files, we find that your correspondence is a duplicate of one which we recently handled. We hope this matter was resolved to your satisfaction."

So much for my ideal world where they actually read the email.

Me: Thanks for calling ******* Carlos speaking how may I help you?

Caller: I received the disk that I request and wonder where I could get an adapter.

Me: (Obviously Cunfused) I'm sorry an adapter for what exactly?

Caller: Well the disk you sent me are smaller than the ones I have and don't fit in the drive properly so I need an adpater to put this disk so I can load your software.

(That's not the end It gets worse)

Me: First sir, to my knowledge, they don't make anything of that nature but I could be mistaken and second if your computer has a 5 1/4 floppy drive then it might not be able to connect to our service because it's too old.

Caller: You don't know what in the hell you're talking about when I bought this computer the guy at the garage sale said he connected perfectly to the internet he even threw in the external 9600 modem. I can see you're not going to be of any to help me so I'll just take my business else where.

Me: Sorry sir you have a nice day.

(Some people should not be allowed to have a computer)

I work at a shop that supports mostly corporate and mid size business accounts, but we get calls from consumers quite often. We get alot of questions about Y2K problems, but this one is the best one yet!

I Recently got a call from a gentleman who had a very simple question; but the wrong company! Read on:

Man: Hi, I need to know: will my power go off at the year 2000? I know all of the computers run all 'that stuff' and that at the year 2000 they could crash. Will my power go out?

Me: Well sir, I don't know the answer to your question. You need to call #^$%^%$%$%^$ Power Company

Man: Well OK but will my power go out or not?

Me: Sir, again, I don't know the answer to your question you need to call the Power Company

Man: This IS the Power Company!!

Me: No Sir, this is %$%$%*(#&, we are a computer shop.

Man: But the lady that answered the phone transferred me to you! She said this was the power company!

Me: No sir this is &*^%%^.

Man: But I dailed the number for the power company!

Me: Sir, this is a computer shop. We are not the power company. You need to call THEM.

Man: OK, fine (click)

I could not quite figure out how that got past the receptionist. Oh well. At least more entertaining that the old coffee tray phone call.