Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

My story begins when a customer we installed a new 3.8GB HDD returns with the PC and a question.

Client: "That HDD you installed yesterday has run out of space already and I don't know where it went!"

Me: "Sounds like someone has spent a long time on the net downloading But I doubt that would be the case." (These guys are not the typical file hoarders).

Client: "Well, I'll leave the PC with you and I'll pick it up later."

We accept to look at the PC, the customer fills in the necessary form and we put the PC through the workflow.

After doing a quick diagnostic we discover that the HDD had only 120MB left! This is ODD! We began investigating the rest of the disk. No faults, everything looked fine.

Just as we were searching the rest of the disk for any possible spacefiller virus we discover several levels off the \mygfx directory. These directories held over 1GB of PORN. We didn't know how to react and then the customer comes back with his 14 year old son following.

I explained that we had found a lot of porn consuming the disk to which I noticed his son was edging his way towards the door.

Never the less, the customers son was made to erase all files (by his father) and pay for the job. Some people will never learn. :)

I provide tech support for UPS and I had a guy call me and he was complaining that his Eltron Printer(a small label printer) was only printing half labels. I ran through all the normal troubleshooting steps and I called 2040(tech lead line) to recieve authorization to send out a tech to give him a new one. The tech lead I talked to told me to reinstall the printer driver. I went back to the customer and at that point he decided to elighten me on what had happened a couple weeks before. He told me this: "Well, about 2 or 3 weeks ago, it shot out this label that was on fire and well since then it's been shooting out charred smoking labels, but it always still worked." Needless to say I didn't bother to reinstall his printer driver.

Another fine afternoon of trying to keep my sanity and tact together on the phone at the ISP.

Lady calls and leaves a voice mail message:

"Hi, this is so and so, I was wondering if you were having any trouble with your satellites?"

Well, this promptly became a .wav file and was mated to an excellent recording of a mission control rocket launch. My boss replies on the .wav: "Yes maam, we're sending a shuttle up right now... 10... 9... 8... all systems go, 7... 6... thrusters on, 5... green 4... go... 3... go... 2... go... 1!" (BRRRRRRRUUUUUUM!)

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Ya know, the first time I have a (L)user type something I make it well known that EVERYTHING must be in lower case.

Why is it, then, that every time I instruct them to type something in they have to ask again if it matters upper/lower case?

me- ok, everything we do is in lower case... type pop.ourisp.com in the blank for incomming mail server...

them - ok

me - ok, for outgoing smtp server, type in mail.ourisp.com

them - ok, does it matter if it's upper case?

me - everything we do has to be lower case, did you type the first one in upper case?

them - no, ok I typed this one in.

me- ok... now under account name, type in your username.

them - in upper case or lower?

me- everything on the screen has to be lower case or it won't work.

them- ok, I did it.

me- ok, then type in your password below that.

them- that has to be lower case too?

(mute button hit- F**K YOU F**k YOU F**k YOU IDIOT - mute button released)

me- yes maam.

------------------

The call from hell...

(L)user calls... I can't get my mail.

me- Ok, what are you using to get mail? Outlook, netscape, internet mail...

them- uh... (pregnant pause) the internet, I get mail on the internet.

me- Ok, we send out all three, go ahead and click on your start button and go up to programs and tell me if you have one of those three.

them- no, I don't see any of those.

me- Ok, how do you usually get your mail? What do you click on?

them- Oh, this icon to get on the internet.

me- click it. What comes up on your screen.

them- Oh, I use Equador

me- eh... what?

them- yeah, I have Equador on it. I used to have Equador Lite but I put this professional one on here.

me- (light bulb over my head) Oh, yeah. (Can't break her heart to tell her it's Eudora)

them- Ok, it says it can't find the server pop.myisp.com

me- are you dialed up?

them- No, I didn't hear it dialing. It hasn't been doing that lately.

me- (seeing a quick end to the call) Well, you have to get it to dial... go to my computer, control panel, modems. You got a modem in there?

them- yeah

me- Ok, now go to dialup networking, you have an icon for us?

them- It just says make a new connection.

me- Ok, (we make a connection to the isp) Now double click it and dial up.

them- ok, it says connected at 9600

me- (mute on- SH_TSH_TSH_T! - mute off) Ok, hang up and lets play with the settings. (20 minutes of tweaking and adding init strings later...)

them- Ok, I'm connected at 33.6 now.

me- Ok, now try to get your mail.

them- It said it can't find the server again.

me- (aw hell, why always me!? Jeff get's the easy calls and I get this crap. His Lusers send praise email to the manager and mine say thanks like it was no big deal and I hear from them only when they're broken again!) Ok, open a dos box and type p-i-n-g-space-p-o-p.o-u-r-i-s-p.c-o-m

them- It said destination host unreachable

me- (on verge of tears) Ok, try tracert to 206.26.xx.xx

them- Same thing

me- Ok, type format c:... ah, never mind, lets check your DNS settings... (20 minutes...) Ok, dial up again and see what you get.

them- Ok, now it says request timed out

me- Ok, is your computer still under warranty? Oh heck, you got your windows cdrom handy?

them- No, I never got a cdrom with this computer

me- Ok, lets find where they stashed win95 on your harddrive then (10 min of digging for a hidden directory)Ok, now go to add/remove programs and uncheck all the communications stuff. Reboot.

them- Ok, it's back up

me- Ok, now reinstall all that stuff and we'll re-add all the DNS stuff again under tcp/ip (10 min later...)

them- ok, I'm dialed in again... same thing... can't find the host.

me- Ok, pull the networking stuff out again. (process repeated 4 times total, nothing different done)

them- Hey, it's working now! What did we do?

me- Beats the hell outta me, it shoulda worked the first time.

them- Well, why did it take 4 times doing it?

me- Because it's Microsoft maam.

(Oh, did I fail to mention that she only had ONE phone line, so each time I wanted her to dial up, I had to hang up and then have her call me back? NO BULL. So, after my first call of the morning I was already late for lunch.)

McTechies: Billions and Billions Served

I worked as an internet tech with a local phone company for almost a year dealing with analog modems. Never have run acrossed a modem like this one.

TECH: Thanks for calling tech support, my name is Aric how can I help you?

CUST: Yes I keep getting the message "internet explorer cannot open the internet site 'www.***.com'"

TECH: Ok, well the first thing I want to know is are you connected to the internet?

CUST: Well, yes of course I am.

TECH: Great! How do you connect to the internet?

CUST: Well, just like everyone else does silly. Through my antenna on my roof.

Of course i had to put her on hold while I laughed histerically for at least five minutes and still didnt have my composure. This was not a cable modem. Because when I had asked her how fast her modem was she replied with 56k.

My friend had recently bought a used computer fairly cheap, and was totally computer illiterate. I have some funny stories with trying to help him...

He asked me how to get on the internet. First thing I asked him was if he had a modem. He told me he did, and that it was a 56k modem. I wondered how this could be, and asked him to lok in the back of the computer for a phone jack.

Him: What's that?

Me: What you plug the phone cord into. Should look the same as what you have on your wall.

Him: No, nothing there.

Me: Well, you don't have a modem. (I knew he didn't have an external)

Him: Yes I do!

I told him to call the person he bough the computer from

A few days later, he called me and told me he put a virus on his computer.

Me: Okay, how did you do it?

Him: I don't know

Me: Did you put any disks into the computer?

Him: No, I don't have any

Me: Well, tell me what happened.

Him: Well, I was hitting buttons and seeing if I could mess things up and it stopped working!

He now plans to get a new computer with a "56k CD ROM".

(This actually happened in Sweden, but I'm translating it

as good as I can...)

I was helping a customer out by phone and was trying to

give her the directions needed to remove a line in her

autoexec.bat .

...

Me: Now type "cd\" and press enter

Her: ok

Me: Good, now type "edit(SPACE)autoexec.bat" and press enter

Her: ok

Me: What does your screen look like now?

Her: it says "c:\windows\)"

Me: let's try this again. type "cd\" and press enter

Her: ok

Me: what did it respond with?

Her: it said "unknown command or filename"

Me: look on the screen, what did you type?

Her: as you said: c, d and \

Me: ok, let's try something else. type "dir" and press enter

Her: ok

Me: what happened?

Her: same thing, it said "unknown command or filename"

Me: this really sounds strange. do you have a printer

attached to your computer?

Her: yes

Me: press the "Print Screen" button on the keyboard, and

then fax me what it prints. ok?

Her: sure!

A minute later I got a fax, with a dump of her screen:

--

C:\WINDOWS\) cccccddddd\\\\\\

Unknown command or filename

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\) eeeeddddiiiitttt aaaauuuttttoooeeeexxxeeec....bbbbaaaattt

Unknown command or filename

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\) cccccddddd\\\\\

Unknown command or filename

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\) ddddiiiiiirrrrr

Unknown command or filename

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

C:\WINDOWS\)

---

I then realized why it had taken her so long to type

these commands (and remember, I'm used to slow typers);

the keyboard repetition on her computer were a little too

fast for her slow, and not-wanting-to-release-each-key

typing skills.

I put up this fax in my office, and it kept me smiling for

at least a month...

Im still in the far east doing tech support, getting calls at odd hours

Im beginning to get calls from people whos english is slightly - well, Not great

It feels like youre in the middle of some giant pratical joke!

User call up first thing in the morning:- Hello, my pc pc is not right

Me (thinking : Oh no, not another one) : Ok sir, what seems to be the trouble

User - It is not working, it is not right

me - okey dokey, what operating system are you using?

user - what is operating system

me (not liking this game any more - blow this, lets just wave the magic wand, and REBOOT!)

- Ok sir, could you reboot your machine please

User - How do I do that?

Me - If you press the on / off switch on the front of your machine, It should restart

User - What is the on off switch

me - do you have any circles on the front of your box sir

user - yes, three

me - okey - could you press the one in the middle

user - yes, it goes to the left

me (okey dokey, weve found the contrast control!) - if you could press the one on the right

User - Screen go dark (YYYYYYEEESSSS!!!)

Me - Ok, If you could push that button again, everything should be ok

User - Ah, machine ok now goodbye

I cant wait to get back to england - other teccies may find this purial, but you dont know how usefull

english speaking sysadmins are till you suddenly find about five that dont

Two tales to tell, one involving myself when working at a British University and the other involves a colleague where I currently work at a research laboratory in the UK.

The thing to bare in mind about this tale is that the student involved is in his 3rd year of a degree in Psychology!!!

The student approached the help desk and asked “How do I get to the next page in Word 6” I thought he must be talking about page breaks, so I explained how to insert a page break. To my amusement he really did mean how do I get to the next page. I then explained that you just carry on typing and once one page is filled the next page gets created automatically!!!!! I returned to the helpdesk and told my colleague the tale, my colleague had been in the job for a couple of years long than me, and said that this particular student had ask the same question the previous year, in fact he had asked it on more than one occasion!!! My colleague told me that with the aid of a roll of continuous feed dot matrix printer paper he managed to explain the concept that one page followed on after the next to the student!!!! I also found out that this student when working on a document that had more than one page would, save one page, and to start a new page he would start a new document!!! i.e. a 20 page document would consist of 20 separate files!!!! The tale doesn’t end there, latter that afternoon the student returned and asked “could you just explain again how do you get the next page in Word!!!!!

I must point out that Psychology degrees are not classed as a “proper degree” by other UK students!!!!

He next tale involves a colleague of mine and a senior scientist, it goes on these lines:

The scientist goes to my colleague’s office and says that when he types something in Word97 the existing text disappears. My colleague goes to the scientist’s office only to find (as expected) the scientist had his insert key depressed. “Right then just press your insert key”, with that the scientist ham-fistedly presses the insert key several times in a row, thus leaving it depressed “No just press the key once!!!!!” Several weeks passed when the phone rings, it’s the scientist again, this time the text keeps disappearing in GroupWise, “Right press you insert key” over the phone my colleague hears the key being pressed repeatedly, “Nope the text is still disappearing”, “No just press the insert key once!!!!”

This scientist is a very senior scientist!!!!!

While answering support calls a customer, thank goodness, leaves a message in the technical support box and awaits a call back. The message comes in as follows:

I just turned on my computer and I get the message "non-system disk error, remove the disk and strike any key to continue" and I can't find my ANY key!

So here goes......

I work at a company who normaly just rent stuff to people.

No computers exept the ones who are in systems.

We recently let all personel by computers for home use at

a very good price. I was in charge of the by since i have the

most experience of PCs. I decided to get the computers from

a company who offered a good support.

We all got our machines and they all seemd to work ok.

One week later i get a call where John has a problem. The

pc wont start at all! I ask him if anything happened before

this and he says " well for some reason in My Computer i had

a D: drive, and we only have one HD dont we?"

(This seem to happen sometimes in W95OSR2, you just restart your pc

and then youre up and running again.)

I reply "yes thats right, so what did you do then?

did you call the support? or did you restart youre PC?

" well i asked my friend" (who works at an other company as

a network engineer)" and he said to copy all the files from

D: to C: and now it wont work.

So trying to copy all files to it self the HD of 9.1GB crashed

and had to be replaced.

Don´t you just wonder why people try the hard and complex way

before the easy?

I am a lead technician for a major computer company and from time to time when a technician has either an irate customer or just one that is actually direction illiterate these calls are escalated to me or one of the other lead techs on the floor.

Seems that a customer had called after purchasing one of our newest computer systems and was now in the process of installing some third party software.

The technician had told her rather nicely that we have a charge for helping customers install 3rd party software at which time she demanded to speak to someone of higher authority... hence it was I that received the call.

After listening to her rant and rave for more than 5 minutes (with the mute button on of course)in order that I could finally get her off the phone I agreed to step her through the installation at no charge...BIG MISTAKE...

The software that she was installing was a dos based game ,and a rather cheesy older version at that, which required that the user actually make a directory at the dos prompt and then install the software to the newly made directory.

It seems that her son had got to the part of making the directory and then had went somewhere with his friends, and his Mom being the lovely and intelligent woman that she was had decided to jump in and finish the job for him in order to suprise him when he returned home... Geez... Starting at the C: prompt I figured "How hard could this be?"

30 minutes later after trying to get the first of 3 disks installed I was finally frustrated to my wits end and could not for the life of me figure what she was doing wrong....

Everytime I asked her to type in cd directoryname she would get bad command or filename over and over and over... I would ask rather calmly whilst beating my head on the desk and jumping up and walking with my hands in the air... Isn't it funny how techs do that???

"Please just do exactly as I say.... type cd , hit the spacebar once, then directory name.....

As always her answer was Bad Command Or File name... finally as if a burst of lightning had struck her within her minute little brainstem she finally asked the 64,000 dollar question...

"How do you spell cd is it S-E-E-D-E-E or C-E-E-D-E-E....?"

Nuff said....

Anon Tech

Oh the tangled tales we weave...

Seems that one of the techs I work with had a call from a customer who was getting the dreaded non-system disk or disk error..

We have learned from experience that usually clearing the CMOS by pulling the jumper fixes this problem 99 times out of 100... but theres always that 100th that bites you...

Customer: I am getting a strange error when I boot that says non system disk or disk error..

Tech: Ok sir, are you comfortable taking the computer apart..

Customer: Yes very.. I take the cover off all the time...

Tech breathing a sigh of relief: OK Sir if you would please remove the screw from the case unplug the computer and then I will direct you in pulling the jumper P5 in order that we may clear the CMOS.

Customer: OK ...(sounds of computer being taken apart) Customer breathing heavily: OK got it....

Tech: OK now sir you will need to pull the CMOS jumper...

Customer: My eyes arent what they should be and the writing is so small.. I don't see a P5...

Tech: Thats ok sir do you see a battery in there about the size of a nickel... silver and shiny... looks a lot like a giant watch battery..

Customer: Yes I see that...

Tech: OK sir I need you to remove that battery and then place it back...

Customer: OK...

Tech thinking sheepishly: Geez this wont be so bad... the old guys ok after all

Customer:Hold on Ill be right back... this battery is really hard to get out...

Tech listening to silence..... Then heavy puffing and grunting and then a loud SMACK..... then a squeaky sound... and another loud POP....

Customer: OK Got it but I have a question I think I may have did something wrong?

Tech: Yes sir what does the problem seem to be...

Customer: Are all of these wires supposed to come out with it???

Tech: What sir?? (in a state of alarm)

Customer: Are all of these wires supposed to come out with it??................

Seems that the technician had failed to notice that on this particular series of computer the CMOS battery was actually soldered to the sytem board... The customer had actually taken a screwdriver and pliers and ripped the battery from the board.... Ever hear of extended warranty in emergencies :)

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Anon Tech...

I'm not actually a tech support, just a

15-year-old boy in Sweden, but I think

that my story is pretty amusing anyway:

We have Macintoshes at school. (yuck) Our

computer teacher isn't as good at computers

as she thinks she is. For example, there

was problems with one of the prninters,

and she thought, that it was because that

someone had infected THE PRINTER with a

virus from a PC. But that ain't nothing.

One day when I took out a 3.5 floppy from

one of the Macs, the small metal thingy

got stuck in there. I thought that it

wouldn't be a problem, so I told her

what had happened.

Ooohh, that's going to be expensive, like

100-200 dollars or so (1$ = 8 swedish crones)

Yeah right I thought. Then she went over

the computer. I thought she was going to

use a pincett (or pincher or whatever it's

called), but no. She went there, unplugged

the computer, turned it so that the floppy

drive was down, and started shaking the

whole computer! I thought: What the h-ll

is she doing?!? She was trying to shake

it out! I told her that there was a thing

over the hole so that it wouldn't come out

anyhow.

I told her that a pincher would be a lot

better, so she found one but couldn't get

it out. She let me try it, and after a

second it was out.

Come to think of it, it might have costed

that much based on how much damage the

hardware took when she shook it.

No, I'm not one of those super-techs who can build any kind of computer system or troubleshoot any problem all the way down to the BIOS level. And don't EVER hire me to set up your network. But back in the predominantly Windows for Workgroups era, I worked for a restaurant management company. The receptionist's computer was the server for the network printer. When she first started, it bugged the heck out of her that her computer's name was spelled incorrectly. Ie, our computer's were given our own names to make things easier for all, but her name was spelled incorrectly. Well, I'm pretty anal about how my name is spelled, too, but whatever my computer wanted to call me was fine with me.

So, she figured out how to change the name. And so nobody could print anymore. My boss, who was quite the techie and had actually set up the network and everything else computer-related in there, was not in at the time. Now I barely knew anything about networks, and the receptionist was clearly much more intelligent than I (just ask her - she'd have been the first to admit it). And so it fell upon me to go to every coworker's computer and redo their network setup so as to point to the "new" computer. Hey, we can print now! Thanks!

PS - this was the sort of receptionist/secretary who did not, after being given a FedEx document to send out, necessarily arrange to have it picked up that day. Couldn't be bothered with such things, apparently.

I do Macintosh tech support for my local ISP. Recently I was

forwarded a call from a new users. This fellow had not had a

net account and thought it was about time he did. Problem was

he could not get his modem to work. No sound, no dialtone,

kept getting error messsage everytime he tried to launch a

connection. After about 30 minutes on the phone checking and

re-checking all his settings, all I could think of was a bad

internal modem. We don't normally do house calls, but in this

case (for a wee fee) I drove 30 miles over to the guys house.

Again I went thru all the settings and still no luck. I told

the fellow, lets pop it open, I've got a spare modem I can try

and maby it's just a bad modem. Moved the monitor off and

started to unplug everything. Just then I looked at where the

fellow had plugged in the modem line. Ethernet plug!! Seems

this model had built in Ethernet and the fellow thought it

was a modem. (Some Mac's come with modems and some don't).

Well while I was there I went on and hooked up an external

modem and it worked, so suggested he go buy a modem.

Moral of story, you can plug a phone line into a Ethernet

10baseT jack!

I now do tech support for a large electrical retailer, and never cease to be amazed by how

ignorantly people blunder into computer ownership - it's a bit like buying a car and then

starting to learn to drive.

Be that as it may, this tale is from when I used to support a removable hard disk.

I took a call from a PC World Technician, asking how to use the drive.

I explained that there were backup utilities, or individual files and folders could be

dragged and dropped onto the disk.

The PC World *technician*'s response?

"What's drag and drop?"

Weep..........

I once worked at a CompUSA as a computer trainer.... in addition to my pretty much daily experiences with complete stupidity in the classroom, we would sometimes get calls from people who were having problems with computers they'd bought.

One such call was legendary in our department. The woman phoned in to complain that she couldn't get her computer to work. She couln't understand why it wouldn't turn on... no matter how many times she pressed on the foot pedal, nothing happened.

A workmate of mine (on a large ISP Helpdesk) just had a call that went something like this:

Tech: "Welcome to so-and-so, can I help you?"

Cust: (loud sound of toilet flushing and customer leaving toilet with cordless phone) "Oh hi, I'm having trouble getting connected!"

Tech: (amused by toilet) "Oh OK. What sort of things are happening when you try?"

Cust: "Well, I just installed your software and it doesn't work when I dial in with my username"...

(at this point the tech has to mute the call in hysterics)

Overheard this one.

One of our techs was telling us about this lady who had called

in complaining that her disk wouldn't work.

He went through the usual palaver of trying to fix it. Then asked

if she got a disk or CD ROM,

Answer 'I got a CD but it wouldn't fit in the disk drive so

I cut it to size.'

ARGH!!!!

me:Help desk, this is Iris

user:Hi, I'm having trouble turning on my computer.

me:ok

silence (me waiting for him to continue-no dice)

me:That's it?

him: Oh yeah, that's the whole problem.

me:Are you talking about the power button? Ok, what exactly is happening when you try to turn it on?

him:Um, well, it's kind of already on but my screen is blank. I checked the cables and they're fine

me:Ok, is the light on your monitor on?

him:No, it's off. But like I said the cables are fine.

me: Ok is the monitor on?

him:Well, I don't know where the power switch is but like I told you before, I checked the cables and they are all set and my screen is just blank.

me:Ok, well it means that your monitor is OFF so you'd have to turn it ON before it WORKS. Then the light will come on.

him: Where's the power switch?

me:On the front, usually right below the screen part. You see it.?

him:Nope nothing. There's nothing here. Just so you know, my monitor is a Compaq.

me:Oh, in that case, I'll be right down. Where do you sit?

him: Marketing, sixth floor.

I was working HelpDesk for a Utility COmpany, and I recieved

a call from a woman in one of our outlying offices.

Her: Our computer has a dead mouse. Do I call you?

Me: Yes, I'll be happy to help. What program are

you using?

Her: We're using WordPerfect - why?

Me: That could be important...have you rebooted since

the mouse died?

Her: Yes...several times, that mouse must have died

weeks ago.

Me: Is the mouse connected tightly to the back of the

computer?

Her: Yes, it's stuck pretty good.

Me: You might need a new mouse...or it might just need

a cleaning. Could you turn the mouse over, do you

see the little black ball underneath it?

Her: What?!?

Me: Is something wrong?

Her: Turn it over? Look at it's WHAT? I am NOT

touching that thing!!!

Me: Why not?

Her: Because it's a DEAD MOUSE, that's why!!!

Me: Ummm...huh?

Her: A REAL, LIVE, DEAD MOUSE!!!

It turns out that a real live mouse had tried to

climb inside the PC through a loose panel, gotten

stuck and died...

I get them from both sides, sometimes. I work for an authorized Apple service provider. I get all the crazy calls from Mac users and I get crazy support from Apple tech support, too. Recently, the good folks at Apple changed their phone queue for service provider support:

"If you are calling for a part number, be advised that the technician will be unable to provide part numbers over the phone. Use your "Service Source" CD or "Service Parts Price Pages" to look up part numbers. If you don't have a "Service Source" CD, call (phone number) to order one. You may also look up part information on the world wide web at (apple's techie address). Your user ID and password information can be found on the "Service Source" CD."

!!!!!

I took a call from a very unhappy customer. He had just bought a new Compaq from the store where I work and was having a problem.

He said, "I just bought this dang new Compaq from you guys 'cuz I din't wanna spend no more money on that dang old Epson I bought there five years back. Now, I got the same dang problem on this dang Compaq I had on that dang Epson! Whut 'r' yew gonna dew about it?!?"

I asked, "Well, sir, what is the problem? I haven't spoken with you before and I don't know what's wrong."

He yelled, "I been tellin' yew jokers this thang won't read no disks! This'n won't read'em neither!"

I replied, calmly, "Ok, sir, just bring the new computer back to the store and we'll get it working for you. After all, that's why manufacturers give us warranties in the first place. I'm sorry you are having a problem, but I'm willing to bet we can get you up and running very quickly."

He seemed mollified by my reassurances, agreeing to bring me the computer immediately.

When he got to the store, I put the new computer on the bench and hooked it up. I booted up and inserted a floppy disk into the drive. The disk read just fine. I copied a file to it and that worked, too.

The customer shouted, "Whut did yew dew to that !@#$ thang? I couldn't never get it to read nor write no dang disks!"

I answered, "I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, sir. I just did what I always do."

He took the machine and left. I thought I would be hearing from him in a few minutes and I was right.

When I took the call, he yelled, "I wanta know whut I need to do to make this !@#$ thang work like YEW DID!"

After calming him down again, I asked him to bring me some of the disks from his office. He hung up without another word and appeared at the service window in ten minutes.

He handed me three boxes of diskettes. As soon as I took the first disk out of the box, I knew exactly what the problem was. The new secretary decided the unlabeled disks they had been using all along were too hard to keep straight, so she labeled all the disks . . . by placing each label carefully on top of each diskette's access door!

Once I had explained the problem to the irate customer, who by-the-way didn't catch the problem himself, (and nobody else at their office caught it either!) he left vowing to fire the secretary as soon as he got back.

We've all been laughing about that one for a couple of years, now.

I'm no techie, but I know a bit about computers and have been a functioning member of AOL for over a year. Recently I got a new computer, full with MSIE4.0 and an AOL start-up. Turns out I needed a newer version of AOL in order to get an add-on that I had yet to download. Looking around I found that my current version was AOL3.0 for MSIE4.0, and upgrades of AOL come with MSIE3.0. Now, maybe it was follish of me from the start to worry, but once you've had MSIE4.0 and AOL at the same time, you don't take any more chances than necessary with your computer :) (I'm convinced Steve Case and Bill Gates are out to get me... damn downloads and upgrades) I ran into a help room to ask quickly if there would be any conflicts, as I had AOL3.0 for MSIE4.0. Here's the gist of my conversation from hell:

me: hello, i've got aol3.0 for msie4.0, ver. x.xx. i need to upgrade to aol3.0 for win95 and was checking to make sure there would be no conflict. am i ok to download aol3.0 for win95?

tech: no, you can't have aol3.0 for msie4.0. that doesn't exist.

me: but that's what i have. i'm looking at my version information right now and it says "aol3.0 for msie4.0, ver. x.xx"

tech: no, it doesn't. you must have aol4.0.

me: i don't have that... aol4.0 doesn't work with msie4.0, i'm not able to have it.

tech: right. you have aol4.0.

me (grr): no, i have aol3.0 for msie4.0

tech: aol3.0 for msie4.0 doesn't exist. you do NOT have that program. tell me what your version info says.

me: it says "aol3.0 for msie4.0, ver. x.xx"

tech: no it doesn't, that isn't a program. you have aol4.0.

me (sighing): ok, is it safe for me to upgrade to aol3.0 for win95, then?

tech: you don't need to, you already have aol4.0. aol3.0 wouldn't be an upgrade. thank you for using AOL Tech Live.

I went into the room later with another techie, who promptly told me that the upgrade was fine, and I went on my merry way.

oh well.

Once upon a time I worked for a company I'm damned glad I

don't work for now because it was pretty dodgy.

Anyways, I got sent out to another computer company to show

'em how to install some modems we'd sold them that they

didn't have a clue with (and I don't blame them, because

these modems sucked). Anyway, I get there and there's no

machine set up for me to demonstrate installation on -

shortly after a machine is produced from the back room, set

up on a bench, and plugged in etc.

And doesn't go. Blank screen, no sign of life.

The guy says..."It worked last night?!?" and starts trouble-

shooting. First he decides it must be the RAM in the machine

(we'd sold the particular RAM they were using to them). He

removes it and replaces it with some other stuff. Still no

go. Tries replacing the monitor, no go. Unplugs the IDE

ribbon cable from the motherboard, and presto! - powers

up, Energy Star logo, memory check etc. "It must be the

hard drive!" he says (we'd sold them the hard drive too).

He removes the IDE cable from the HD, then plugs the other

end back into the motherboard, and powers up again. No go.

Okay, it's not the hard drive..."Must be the CD-ROM" he

says. We'd sold him the CD too (anyone noticing a pattern

of attempted blame here?). The whole time this was going on

he'd said "It worked yesterday!" several times...

About this time I noticed what the problem was. I had to

back away, walk outside the door of the shop and burst

out laughing there rather than do it right in front of the

guy and piss off a fairly regular customer of our company.

The problem? He'd mounted the CD-ROM drive *upside down*.

Y'know, instead of the eject buttons on the bottom right,

they're on the top left. The bit that says 8X is saying X8.

The "COMPACT DISC DIGITAL AUDIO" logo is unreadable.

However, the IDE cable was connected the normal way up, so

the plug was effectively in backwards, stopping the machine

from booting.

I finally decide to let him out of his misery and I say...

"Uhhhh, Paul, I think I see what the problem is"...

I reach over to the CD drive, press the eject button and

he stares blankly at the tray as it ejects. After a few

seconds he's obviously noticed that something's wrong (after

all, he's looking at a ratchet drive instead of the regular

indentation for putting a CD in) but I still have to spell

it out for him..."Uh Paul....you mounted the CD upside

down".

Embarrassed look, I wonder outside to burst out laughing

again while he fixes it...

And then, it transpires, it doesn't even have Windows

installed yet! Another 40 mins while that happens...for

the five minutes it took to demonstrate installing the modem,

I was in their blasted shop for nearly two hours...

The thing that really got me was him saying all along that

it worked the day before...obviously he had no concept

that something as _trivial_ as installing a CD-ROM could

possibly affect anything. :-p

His company has now gone bust. I'm not the slightest bit

surprised.

I had a customer call me up that I sold a custom built system to and she said "If somebody asks me what computer I have, what do I tell them?" I told her "Tell them that you have an MMX233" and she says "How do you spell that?"

I do tech support for a small Software developing company. Back when the 5 1/4 floppy drives were big, I sent a customer a data file on a 5 1/4 floppy diskette..with DETAILED instructions on how to install the data.

Tech: This is @#$%^ how may I help you?

Caller: I received the diskette with the data file..I've installed it and everything, but the file isn't there!

Tech: Did you run the program to append that data file to your existing doc file?

Caller: Yes, I did everything your instructions said to do.

Tech: I told him I'll go through the installation with him....maybe something happened and it didn't get installed properly.

Caller: Proceeded to read my instructions...line by line

1. Exit to Dos prompt (did so)

2. Type CD\@#$% press enter key (did so)

3. Take Diskette out of Disk Mailer (did so)

4. Insert Diskette into Drive A (did so)

Caller comments that the computer makers should make it more easy to insert the diskettes in the drive.

Tech: What do you mean...the diskette should slide right in...as long as the little cut out notch is always to the right or top depnding on the angle of your drive.

Caller: But this little round piece bends so easy...

Tech: What round piece...the diskette is square!!

Caller: Square..black.. oh know!!!...... Well, when your instructions said to take diskette out of mailer...I took the Black Square plastic thing off...

Tech: I'll send you another diskette...please call me when you receive anything from ##$%@....don't open it until I'm on the phone with you.

Just had this call today:

Me: Good Afternoon! Tech Support, how can I help?

User: I want a refund for my computer!

Me: Can I ask what the problem is?

User: Yes, I don't agree to the software license agreement.

Me: Ah, er ...

Things went downhill from there.

Shortly after installing an application I had written for a customer, the customer's support manager (a former plant engineer with IT aspirations) called me to say that the printer was printing garbage on the shipping documents. Unable to diagnose the problem over the phone, I told him I would be there (an hour's drive away) at 6:30 the next morning to look at it myself.

The moment I got there I realized that the last person to turn on the printer had been holding down the line feed button at the same time; the printer was in hex dump mode. I explained to the aspiring programmer that we could either teach the warehouse operators to read ASCII hex or we could simply turn the printer off and back on.

Oh, the painful recollections...

My first story involves a wonderfully stupid man who decided to phone up tech support for his ISP one day... Little did we know how horrifyingly stupid he was...

me: Hi, this is (blankity blank blank), Noah speaking, how can I help you?

guy: Yeah, I'd like to sign up...

me: Okay...

*I take down his information and start giving him the procedure to download the installation software, since he didn't want to wait for a floppy.

me: What sort of computer do you have?

guy: A mac.

me: Okay, do you have a terminal program?

guy: Yeah.

me: Just dial this number (blankity blank) and use the username and password (blank blank). It'll automatically send the software to you, but make sure your term program is set to receive zmodem, okay?

guy: Okay. Thanks. Bye.

*half an hour later, Mr. Moron phones back, asking for me.*

guy: Hi, I dialed the number, and I got this beep, right? So I said the password but nothing happened. I said zmodem too... Should I have left my address?

*I hang up, walk out of the building, chainsmoke, and relate the story to my co-workers...*

My next tale didn't happen to me, but I had to keep my co-worker from bashing his head against the wall after he hung up...

tech: Okay, sir, just right-click on the start button.

other end: *tap tap tap tap* Nothing happened...

tech: Um... just put the arrow over the start button and right-click, sir.

other end: *tap tap tap tap* Still nothing...

tech: Sir... you're not... writing "click" with the keyboard, are you?

other end: What else could you mean?

tech AAAARGH!!! (click)

I really miss customer service. Really.

I'm not a tech, but I do registrations for OCR software that comes bundled with scanners and we are continually amazed at the idiots who spend money on scanners with no clue what they're doing. Usually it's a person who's bought their scanner off the home shopping channel. After we go throught the registration process we launch into our upgrade sale and it often goes something like this.

Me: Now that we've registered your software sir, what kind of documents will you be scanning?

Caller(always has a redneck accent): I don't know. I just saw this thing on the home shoppin and thought it was a good deal so I bought it. What the heck does it do?

Better yet, when a customer purchases an all in one machine (printer, fax, copier, scanner) they get royally argumentative and insist that they DIDN'T BUY A SCANNER!!

Only true technicians get to see and hear the good stories; because we know what to look for. When you get a customer on the phone who asks for "That printer with the phone on it", or when they refer to the computer as the "hard drive" or the "modem", but rarely do you get the customer that DRILLS HOLES in the case of the machine to get it open. Customer comes in with this computer looking like a bad pound of swiss cheese; and says, "I's tryin' ta open ma hard drive so I's cude gets me sum Rams. Do ya thank I blowed sump'n up?" Trying ever so hard not to burst into tears from laughter swelling up inside my chest, I took the machine from this poor technologically inadvanced person and put it on the bench. Turns out he drilled a hole through his processor and only because he didn't know what that key that came with the computer was for :)

I have found it invaluable to always carry a pocket

screwdriver with me at work -- not because I can get

anything done with the soft, small blade, but because

of its immense power otherwise (the rest of you techs,

"Don't go there" :-)

When I was working in college, I would often have to

support puffed up professors who could *barely* bring

themselves to call me in the first place. Of course,

a lowly undergrad tech can't afford to fall into the

disfavor of such an influential professor. Hmmm...

You know, that's about the way it is in my corporate

job today :-) But I digress...

Prof: Hi! My PC doesn't work any more.

Me: Let's see here... Is there anything showing on the

screen?

[Note: depending on how important this prof is, we might

skip this part and jump straight to "I'll be right down".]

Prof: No; it's dark, even though it's turned on.

[Oh -- a technically advanced prof!]

-) we walk through some troubleshooting, to no avail (-

Me: I'll be right down

...

Me: Let's see what I can do here...

-) Sits down in front of computer to discover no apparent

power (-

Me: Just let me duck under here for a moment, sir

-) Ducks under desk and either plugs in computer or

turns power strip back on. Removes screwdriver from

pocket and comes back up with a flourish (-

Me: (obviously putting screwdriver back in pocket)

That should do it; just a minor problem. Look, it's

coming right up!

:-D T-G

Part of my job is holding the official title of "Virus Guru". We recently had a virus on a Macintosh (one of the few remaining ones around here). The virus was on their 'new' PowerMac, but they were afraid it had gotten to the other two. They use Zip disks to transfer files from one mac to the others. As I go to the other mac, I see that there's no power to the zip drive. I asked the user about this, and she said "Oh, just kick the black box there on the floor". She was referring to the power supply for the external Zip drive. I did, and the power came back on, so I tried to put the disk in, but it obviously couldn't read the files. I asked her if she had called the help desk to get them to send a technician to replace it, and she said "No, because then we'd have to take the wire out of the black box". For some reason, I guess she doesn't have any electrical applicances at home, she thought that the power cord had to be removed from the transformer! It was, after all, a black box ;)

We have given to our users the brand new Compaq DESKPRO,

with these no-coffee-cup-handler CD-ROM drive.

You have to insert the CD, and it would grab it...

But, for two different users, it happened that they mistake

its purpose, and they forced a floppy disk into it.

When asked, they said that they didn't find it strange that

it was so hard to insert a floppy in the CD-ROM drive !

Me : (usual sentence), may I help u ?

User : yes, I am responsible for the Y2K compliancy, and

I wanted to know if the tunners used for the printers here

on our site are Y2K compliant ?

After checking on the calandar that it was NOT 1st of April,

I told him that AFAIK, yes, they are...

Y2K jobs look like lot of fun, don't they ? :-)

Customer called today on our 900 service. We bill at $2.49 a

minute.

The caller hung up after I asked which software of ours she

had and what version. She thought it was rude to ask.

I don't work Tech, but I do work Customer Service for a small, protected-access ISP. I get asked a lot of technical questions from not-even-newbies-yet. I got a call yesterday from a man, inquiring about our pornography-free internet access.

Man: "Maybe I just don't understand this, but if my internet service provider is a reputable company, wouldn't they just not do business with those porn sites?"

On the plus side, I think he got it after I explained that Ford doesn't control where you take your car, they just provide the car. ISP's don't control where you take your browser, they just provide the browser!

And passed along from one of our tech guys: "What version of the internet do you offer?"

A couple of days ago one of my frieds called and told me

that I had to come over couse his monitor didnt work.

I tried to troubleshoot the situation over the phone, but he

wanted me to come over and fix it. He said if I didnt come

he'll call the police on me. So I came.

When I came over I immidiately saw the problem....

He had forgotten to turn it on.

Im sorry that I laughed so hard in his face, but I couldnt

resist it.

BVNKHKKH

Local ISP Horror Story Time!

I had been working with this customer and his wife for the last 30 minutes so, setting everything up for Dial-Up Networking, Mail, and all the bells and whistles that go with our software. Everything was picture perfect until we tried to dial in....

(Customer was on cordless phone, for which the base was in another room entirely.)

Me: Go ahead and click on connect.

Cust: It says 'No Dial Tone'.

Me: Take a look at the back of the machine and tell me if there is a phone cord plugged into it.

Cust: (Much shuffling and swearing as he got under his desk) Whoops, there isn't.

Me: Do you have an extra phone cord lying around the house?

Cust: Sure. (To wife) HONEY! COULD YOU GO GET THE PHONE CORD FROM THE OTHER ROOM? (Much thumping across floor)

Wife: THIS ONE? (Evidently, she could see him from the other room)

Cust: YEAH, THAT ONE! GO AHEAD AND UNPLUG IT AND BRING IT HERE!

Me: Ok, ready?

Cust: CLICK.

Turns out the the wife had unplugged the cord from the base to the phone. But that's not all! Oh, no. I couldn't call them back, and hoped that they'd figure it all out and call back. Evidently, problem-solving wasn't their forte; it took them a full hour to call us back. :)

I do tech support for a college in a state university.

We have a new receptionist, who is about 5 cans short

of a six pack, and not the most gramatically oriented

person either.

Her: "I can't get the mailboxes file open."

I go into her F: drive, and pull the document up no problem.

me: "It's an Access file, are you trying to open it in Word?"

Her: "That's what I said!! I been trying to Access

it but it don't work!!!"

And this gem, from a tenure-track phd faculty member:

f.m: "The picture tube in my monitor has blown. I need another one.

The thing at the bottom says 'no signal'"

(It's an old 17" with an led display at the bottom)

me: "Is it plugged into the back of your computer?"

f.m: (long pause) "YES! I want a new monitor right now!"

I go up to her office and turned her computer on.

Presto! Her monitor works!

Working with a mid-sized network of 800 users, we were in transition between the "old" NT 3.51 interface and the "new" NT 4.0 desktop. While troubleshooting with a user over the phone, one of the first things I needed to know was whether she had NT 3.51 or 4.0. After asking her and getting the standard "how do I tell?" response, I asked her the same question a different way: Do you have a Start button in the lower left-hand corner or do you see the Program Manager? She replies: "Oh no. My Program Manager is on vacation..."

A long time ago, a friend of mine related this story from her office.

She used to work for a firm that used the Merlin Office Telephone System. The person who initially ordered it had done so not thinking that the office would grow in a few years, and as a result, did not aquire an upgradable package. Over the years, they went from half of one floor to two whole floors, and the system, which was running on a different voltage, would constantly go down as a result of the system overheating or other problems that would trip the safety off switch. The system was not built to handle that many phones, but someone had made a kludge that bypassed the limitation somehow.

My friend was the secretary, and needed the phone system to work at all times. During days of heavy phone use, the system had a tendency to go down a lot, causing her to call a tech, who would come down and fix it. One day, a new tech arrived, and after a few weeks of coming over almost once a day, he took her aside.

"Miss?" he asked. "How would you like to look like a guru?"

"Okay," she said, amiable to that kind of status.

"It's not that I don't like coming here and fixing things. That's my job. But I have come over here almost every day for three weeks, and always it's the same problem. You guys are paying more for our visits than it would to buy a whole new system. Here's what we'll do so I can save time, and you don't have to wait for me to show up, and you'll look like the hero.

"When the system goes down again, go to your boss, and say you have had it up to here with the system. Say you are sick of having to call the techs day in and day out. Take off one of your shoes and bang it on the desk if you want. Then demand two powdered donuts, some coffee, and a newspaper. When you get these, go into the switch room over there, close the door after you, and lock it. It's nice and cool in there. Sit down on a chair, read the paper, drink the coffee, take off your shoes, and eat the donuts, making sure to get your fingers covered with white dust. Then, open the large black box, and push the button marked RESET. Hold it down for the count of three, and wait for the test light to go back to green. Mess up your hair a little, and come back out of the room with your shoes in your fingers, and put them back on where people can see you. Exclaim you fixed the system, by God, and you saved the office. In no time at all, people will revere you like a Goddess."

She took the advice, and within weeks, she was revered as a tech guru. She took the time to study the system some more, and soon learned that she was a natural. Now, almost ten years later, that girl works for a software testing company as a lead programmer, making a hell of a lot more than she would have as a secretary.

She learned the secret of the black box.

I work as a computer technician for a local computer company building and repairing systems. We build our own line but are frequently having to repair systems from other manufacturers as well. One night, while getting some "sales" training (so I can cover dinner breaks) I get a phone call from a customer wanting help in installing her new sound card. It went like this:

Me: Hello, _blank_ Computers, this is Steve how can I help you?

Customer: Hi, I just bought a 16 bit ISA Soundblaster (PNP)card and would like help installing it...

Me: Over the phone correct? You already have it installed in an ISA slot correct?

Customer: Yea...

Me: Is your computer on now?

Customer: No, should I turn it on now?

Me: (Under my breath...this is going to be a least a six pack night...) Yes, go ahead and turn the computer on...let Windows 95 auto-detect it.

Customer: OK...(after a few minutes of having the customer read the Hardware Detection Wizard dialog aloud and thinking to myself of how the first cold one would taste right now...)

Customer: OK...it finished...it's telling me to press "next" to have Windows 95 finish the installation...What should I do?

Me: (Wishing I had a very large heavy object...like a morning star or a hammer even) PRESS NEXT!

Sometimes I think software licenses for users should include written tests.......

I work at a technical helpdesk, one day I received a called from a man that was have trouble logging into his system. I told him to type in his password and enter. The man then said it is not working. I said did you press the enter button? He said, "no", I was typing the word enter.

Knowing enough about computers to really screw up one, I have a lot of friends who ask me for help. Some ask me for other people. This one was a friend of a friend who said that her computer was whispering to her.

This was done by e-mail, and here is a condensed dialouge.

Her: Sometimes, when I turn on the computer, it whispers to me in evil voices.

Me: Evil voices? Does is sound like hissing (thinking modem noise here).

Her: No, it's voices... after a while, it sounds like music.

Me: (thinking wacko) What kind of music?

Her: Evil, haunting music. It whispers "Gonna getcha gonna getcha..." and then (describes this kind of music).

Me: How long does it last?

Her: As long as I have the computer on. Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it doesn't. I usually have to wait a day before the music turns off.

Me: Is there anything in the CD-ROM drive?

Her: Yes, a shimmering disk of silver with runes on it. (actual wording)

I found out she had some sort of Gothic CD, and a CD-player that automatically plays audio CD's at boot-up. Her step-son was using the computer, and played this goth-industrial music softly so he wouldn't get caught, but forgot to take the CD out. When she found this out, she was SO relieved, she didn't even have the heart to punish him. It never occurred to her she could play audio-CDs on her computer.

Last week I set up a new computer for an employee, and switched her old computer with a dumb terminal that she had been using to access our mainframe. I went upstairs to hook the computer up to the new switch, only to find that the old terminal had never been hooked up in the first place! I went back downstairs and asked the user if she'd had any problems getting into the mainframe.

"Nope, it works fine!"

Gee, I didn't know our network had gone wireless!

me: Hello, this is electronics how can I help?

caller: yes, do you got faxes?

me: Fax Machiens?

caller: yes

me: yes we do carry them, is there any one in specific you had in mind?

((( boring 'tell me ALL about ALL your products' cut out )))

me: this last fax uses toner and plain paper

caller: ok, umm ... that fax macheine ... it sends and recieves faxes, right?

Aaaaaargh!

Well I have to tell you being in the computer field for 4 years

really opens your eyes to some of the stupid things users do, but

one instance in particular will always amaze me. I took a call from

an older women who was having problems with AOL, the content of the

call went something like this

Tech: (Company Name) How may I help you?

Customer: Yes, I am having a problem with my computer.

Tech: Okay what is the problem your experiencing?

Customer: Well Last night I was using AOL and everything was

working fine. I tried to log-on today and I can't.

Tech: Well it's probably a problem with AOL, there have been some

really bad storms the past couple of days and it has caused

a lot of phone problems.

Customer: Well my phone works fine.

Tech: Yes, I understand but when you dial AOL your connectin to

another computer here locally, but that is connected to

another computer that could be located in Virginia or California.

Customer: Really, I thought AOL was just aroudn here. So what your saying

is that it could be problems somewhere else, that is causing this?

Tech: Yes, That is correct. I would wait and try it a little later and see,

otherwise contact AOL.

Customer: Well can't you send a Technician out, to start at my house and check

all the lines from my house to where ever it ends?

Tech: Maam we are a computer store, we don't fix phone lines and also if you need

phone lines from here to Virginia checked then you need to contact the phone

company.

Customer: So I have to contact the phoen company about AOL?

Tech: No to have phone line problems checked contact the phoen company.

Customer: I'll just call AOL and talk with them..

We all had a good laugh after I got off the phone. The customer called back later

that day to see if we had sent anyone out to check the lines.

I work in development, and having previously worked in support I have seen my fair share of *interesting* problems. This story however comes from an experience with a co-worker this week.

My co-worker, lets call her Jane, actually works for a software vendor and is their representative at our site, setting up the rather complex cross-platform product and provinding on-site support. Now Jane has a notebook that she uses when she is at customer sites and also has a workstation that we have provided for use while she is at our site. Usually when she is working on files she either transfers them between the notebook and the workstation by disk or sends herself an e-mail, however on this particular day, for whatever reason, she wanted to print from the notebook. Now we have a shared printer in our group attached to one of the spare workstations so Jane decided that she would unplug this and use it to print from her notebook. Fine so far, now remember that Jane is a *technical* person and is providing vendor support. Jane then proceeded to unplug the printer cable from, you guessed it, the printer and tried to make it fit one of the ports on the back of her notebook. Finding that the cable would not fit any of the ports on her notebook she proceeded to ask another co-worker if she had standard ports on her notebook as the cable would not fit. Having watched and listened to this, I could stand it no longer (my desk is beside the printer) and suggested that if she wanted to print to the printer she should unplug the cable from the workstation not the printer. Jane said nothing, however followed my instructions and lo and behold, it worked. Working for a software vendor you wouldn't expect her to know everything about hardware, but some things are just too obvious!

This isn't really a computer story----but voice mail seems to have the same stupifying effect on some people. I work in an area that has a main number as well as ten direct extensions. In other words, everyone's phone rings at my desk. Today a woman called wanting to speak "to someone handling maternity leave" so I transferred her over to the line of the only staff nurse who was in the office today--who happened to have stepped out for a moment, unknown to me. Her extension rang, rang, rang, rang, went to voice mail, then a moment later the main line rang again. I knew what it was...

Caller (irate): "Yes, I just called, and you transferred me to an extension that no-one picked up! I got voice mail!"

Me: "Well, I'm afraid she must have stepped out of her office for a moment. Did you leave her a message so she could return your call?"

Caller: "No---should I have? Could you transfer me again?"

Me (rolling eyes): "Just one moment...."

(You wouldn't believe how many times a day that happens!)

While we're on the subject---

A) Why do some people think that if they hang up when the voice mail message clicks in and dial right back (again and again and again....) they're going to get a "real person" on the phone?

B) Are these the same people that, when the secretary answers ("Doctor Who's line, Maddy speaking...") immediately slam down the phone--then call back in a moment hoping the boss picks up.....

We recently sold a system to an elderly gent who decided to "get with the 90's" and learn the basics of computing. Never the less we gave him the best deal in town and he walked away with his PC.

Two days go by and we receive a call :

Cust: Hi, it's Mr XXXX here I purchased a PC from you.

Me: Uh yeah, right. How can we help you?

Cust: Well, I got it home and connected it all. Then I

switched it on. But nothing happened.

Me: Okay, are you near the PC now? Try pressing the

POWER button on the right hand side of the front

panel. Do you see two lights light up?

Cust: No, nothing. But the screen is displaying a grid?

This is the story which a friend of mine told me a while ago. She was working as a consultant for direct support at a swedish goverment department an this was her first day at the department. At the time for when everybody started to work she got a call from a woman who said that her computer didn´t start. She asked the normal questions when there was a problem, but she only got answers that indicated that the woman didn´t have the slitest idea what was wrong. She said she would be right up in a minute. When she had hungup she asked the regular support staff if they knew anything. They said that it was routine for that woman to call every morning and say thet her computer was out of order, but they had grown tired to help her. Why was that? Every timethe woman started up her computer she would pu a floppy in the 3.5" drive, any floppy whith or whithout data. They had told her not to do so and she had insited that that was the way she had been thougt to do. They had told her again but she wouldn´t listen. Anyway they finaly taped up her floppydrive just to stop her from inserting anything.This was about a month ago. My friend went up to the woman and she couldn´t get the computer started either so she brought it down to maintenance to see if there was any thing wrong with it. As she opend it she foun nearly thirty floppys broken or unbroken inside the hull of the computer. Apparently the woman kept inserting floppys into every slot she could find on the hull because she was told that you should insert a disk upon ´booting your computer

I work for an outsource tech support vendor, and we handle calls for several ISPs across the country. But a call I got a couple of months ago really takes the cake...

Here's the setup... The (l)user had been having DNS problems, so after having taken the appropriate steps to make sure everything was installed correctly, I was having him try an address in IE. Since he had 2 phone lines, I figured this would be an easy way to check, right?

Me: Ok, sir, please click where it says "Address."

Me: Ok, and what does it say there right now?

User: it says something about blank htm or somethin'...

Me: Ok, erase what's there, and type this.. ready? http...

User: Paul, can you cut the crap and be straight with me for a second?

Me: [confused] ok....

User: How much of this sh*t am I going to have to do?

Me: How much of what, sir?

User: Typing in sh*t. I didn't get the internet to have to type sh*t.

Me: Well, sir, [fibbing a little] normally, you don't have to type much on the internet, but for troubleshooting purposes...

User: [*CLICK*]

Me: ... And thank you for calling ******* tech support.

While working in a chemical manufacturing company I had a very intelligent engineer tell me that he was cleaning his office and accidentally unplugged his computer. He was astonished that his computer went off. After explaining to him that the machine needed constant power to stay on, he responded "Yeah, but I plugged right back in".

Memorial day weekend I was some how bribed into working for six hours on a Saterday. (I got some cool new speakers, a 17 in monitor, permission to wear jeans for a week and lunch compliments of the call center manager.) I work for an extreamly large call center. Being the only tech in the building, I was irritated even farther. For the six hours I was sleeping er.. working. I had four calls. Two of which were relevant. Please keep in mind I am a southern female with a strong accent. My favorite story is as follows.

Me: *Big company* HelpDesk, how may I help you?

Him: Uhhhh... Is this a fantasy hotline?

(at this time I wanted to say... "Yes it is may I have your credit card number and experation date?")

Me: (Holding in the laughter) No, this is a HelpDesk and I can not help you with that.

Him: Ok thank you. (phone slams into the cradle)

Next time Ill get that credit card number!!!

I was working for an ISP and I got a call from

a user saying that there screen went blue with

a bunch of funny letters and numbers at the top.

Trying to make light of their worries I just

said, "Oh, you got the blue screen of death".

With a screech she said, "My computer is dead?!?"

After close to 8 years in the computer industry I thought

I had heard it all....until now.

One of the guys who works in the support department with

me fielded one of THE most original phone calls ever.

Tech:Hello what seems to be the problem

Caller:I have a big problem.

Tech: Whats wrong?

Caller:In dial up networking I changed my dial up properties

and now the police are here!!

(note:we enable dial up networking locations (dial 9 for lead, use 1 + area code, etc.)

Tech: You used dial up networking and now the police are there!!!??????

Caller: YES! They told me to stop dialing the emergency number 911

Tech: You dialled 911???

Caller: All I did was change my dial up properties.

Tech: What did you change?

Caller: Well I was at home and I put in a 9 for an outside line and 1 and then the area code.

Tech: Hmm. did you see the number that was dialed?

Caller: Yes it was 9,1,1(areacode,then phone)

Tech:How many times did you try to call (fighting back the

laughter and tears)....)

Caller: I have been trying ALL DAMN DAY LONG to get ahold of you!!!!!!

I sold a 486/100Mhz system to a friend of a friend about 6 months ago.

The husband and wife,(whom I shall call Bob and Mary because they may visit this site) who were buying the system at that time wanted to know if an old dot-matrix printer they had would work with the computer. I told them to bring it over and that I would hook it up and check it out. It was an old but very nice Tandy printer and I knew it would work. I set it up for them and printed pages and showed them the features of the computer etc. etc. Saying that they were comuter iliterate is a gross understatement so I also explained to "Bob" that when the computer is "on" that he should never disconnect the printer or any other device from the computer. Bob replied "No problem" and Mary paid me the money for the system. When I went to shut down the computer(WIN95), the whole system was locked up and the printer was disconnected!! "Bob" had just re-entered the house after putting the printer back in the car. I stated as I was tearing the cover off of the tower, "Why did you do that! Didn't you hear what I just told you?" He replied "I didn't disconnect the printer, Just the cable from the back." ARRRGH!!! Luckily I reseated the control card and the system was ok. There are more horror stories with Bob and Mary that I will relate at another time...

Bob called me about 3 weeks after purchasing my 486/100Mhz computer system(he had called about 25 times before that with other bizarre computer questions), telling me that the keyboard had stopped functioning.

Me:"It's not working at all?"

Bob:"Nope".

Me:"Test the keyboard on another computer".

Bob:"I don't have another computer".

Me:"I know, just take it to a friends house or a computer store. The keyboard is new, take it to Computer City where I bought it from".

Bob:"ok".

He finds out that the keyboard is fine and now I'm wondering what's wrong so I told him to bring the computer and everything else,(disks and all) over to me.

I set the system up and sure enough, when you boot, the lights go on for a second but the keyboard is dead. I'm wondering if a chip on the motherboard went. He then informs me that he decided to upgrade and shows me a 100Mhz bus motherboard and a 300Mhz AMD chip.

Bob:"Can you switch it for me? I will pay you or work out a deal."

He spent 500 bucks on this stuff.

Me:"You going to need a new PCI video card, a 16 bit video card will suck on this system."

We went to a computer store and against my objections, he purchased a Velocity 128 AGP card and 64 MB of "special" SDRAM. Now we are up to 800 bucks.

We are now back at my place and I'm installing all of the "goodies" when he casually informs me that he went on vacation for a week and locked the tower so that no-one would mess with the computer.

When I owned the computer I never locked the tower and I had forgotten that I had given him the keys. Well, the lock is a keylock, which prevents, you guessed it, anyone from using the keyboard. He now has his new system which worked fine when he walked out with it. He will be over soon because he deleted a file and now his entire operating system is gone...But that is another story...

I don't have first hand knowledge of this but it was "verified" by more than one person.

In a high level government agency meeting discussing the potential problems and solutions to Y2K issues, a high-ranking military official was asked what his agency was preparing to do about the Y2K problems.

It is reported that his response was simple..."What did we do the last time?"

TechSupport: What sort of problem are you having?

Customer: Well, I got your software and while trying to install I got stuck.

TechSupport: Well, how far did you get?

Customer: I put the CD in the drive and the splash screen came up.

TechSupport: And...

Customer: That's it, I don't see where to go from here.

TechSupport: Sounds to me like an RTFM.

Customer: An RTFM?

TechSupport: (shocked having just realized that was said out loud) Yes. It's an error.

Customer: Is it common?

TechSupport: Happens more than you think with all kinds of software.

Customer: What can I do?

TechSupport: Do you have the installation manual that came with the software?

Customer: Yes, it's in the box.

TechSupport: Well, get the manual out of the box.

Customer: Hold on, I have to get it out of the trash.

TechSupport: Got it?

Customer: Yeah.

TechSupport: Now turn to page 3 and follow all the directions from there to page 10.

Customer: And this will solve the problem?

TechSupport: Absolutely!

Customer: Thanks!

*Note - This call could not have been made without the skillful use of the mute button on the telephone. And if you haven't figured it out, RTFM = Read The F***ing Manual.*

The Tech Support department where I work does support only on a contract basis with companies that have bought licences to our software. So the support line is a voice mail box where people are instructed as follows: "Thank you for calling (company name) Technical Support. Please leave your customer ID #, your company name, your phone number, your name, and a brief description of your problem including which product and version it concerns."

Simple. Clear. Or so we thought...

At 6:28am we received a call in the box:

"Hi, this is Dave. I'm having a problem with one of your products. If someone could call me back soon I'd really appreciate it."

Missing just about every piece of info we asked for I then went around playing the message for all our staff in hopes that someone recognized the voice. No such luck.

At 9:45am we get another message from Dave:

"This is Dave again. I called about 3 hours ago with a problem and I really need some help. Call me back at my office or my cellular."

This time I don't even bother trying to find someone who might know this man.

At 2:02pm, Dave strikes again:

"(mumbling).. Look, this is the third time I've called today and we are in a crisis situation here. I really need some support. I've paid my bills and I'm up to date on everything, just call me back. (pause) Oh, this is Dave."

By this time we are playing his messages over the intercom system all getting a great laugh out of it. But the day comes to a close and we all scoot at 5:30pm.

The next morning I find another message from Dave that he left at 6:22pm:

"I'm really tired of this sh*t... you guys told me when I paid for this service that all calls are returned in 1 hour, and you people have been jerking me around all day. ALL GOD D*MNED DAY!!"

And the call ends with a phone being slammed down.

I figure it's over, that we either lost a customer or maybe he wasn't a customer to begin with until I hear the next message, left at 6:24pm...

All of us who are in at the first of the day are crying with laughter when the next message plays, and we all end up gripping tables or chairs, or falling on the floor in horrible fits of laughter where we all think we are going to die as we hear Dave's final message. This one with all the proper information while attempting to disguise his voice.

I had just bought a new monitor for my computer a while back, and a couple weeks after I bought it I started having troubles. I do computer consulting, so I am very familiar with all the troubleshooting techniques for computers. I was a little surprised with this problem though because the monitor would flicker and beep every couple of minutes. I hadn't ever heard of a monitor beeping, but it was a new monitor, and I figured that maybe it was having trouble and it was some sort of warning or diagnostic.

I called my friend over to help out since he was more familiar with that brand of monitor than I was. He said that it shouldn't be beeping, but when we went back over to my place, it was still beeping at regular intervals and the screen flickered each time. My friend looked at the monitor a minute or two, and then went through some of the papers in front of the monitor where he found my new cel-phone beeping to tell me the batteries were dying. Appparently it managed to make the monitor flicker when it beeped, and I hadn't had the batteries run low before, so I didn't know what it sounded like.

Needless to say, my friend didn't let me live that one down real well. He might have if I had been a standard user, but as a skilled computer tech, he couldn't.

We run a home business which basically touches on many areas of computers.

From repairs to building them to web design to coding and basically anything

else we are asked to do. As such we often get help requests from friends and family.

A couple of the funnier ones are as follows. I went to

have dinner with a friend and his Girlfriend. She had a

fairly nice computer sitting in the corner that did not

seem to be used very much. When I mentioned this to her

she said she only used it for her grades (she is a teacher)

and her son occasionally used it to play games. The main

complaint about the PC seemed to be that it too so much

time putting in her 'password'. Knowing that it was rare

that DOS would have a password I asked her to show me

where she needed to put the password in. She promptly

booted up the computer and said here it is..then proceeded

to set up her CMOS. Next i was telling her about BBS's and

she had wanted to try and connect to one..but was beyond

shocked when i told her she had to connect her computer to her phone line.

I got her set up with a line running from her computer to the phone outlet but I

doubt she ever tried it again.

A few years later I had moved to the States from Canada and

I was speaking to my uncle on the phone (he called me long

distance to ask me to look something up on the Internet

for him), now this uncle likes to get a few 'key words'

which he uses..to try and sound like he knows what he is

talking about. He was telling me how his nephew had the

most up and coming computer on the market that he was going

to let him use. After a bit of prodding from me i found

out that it was a 386 of some sort. I told him that they

where pretty much out of date and trying to find anything

that would run decently on it would be hard. I told him

they should look into upgrading to a Pentium and that with

todays prices it would not cost

very much at all. My uncle

then proceeded to inform me that Pentium's where not

available in Canada. In fact not only where they not

available there BUT it was illegal to own one in Canada,

and that if i tried to bring him

one I would surely be

stopped at the border as a smuggler. He then went on

to explain to me (as if I was a 5 year old child) that the

Canadian government had tried to use Pentium's and found

the Pentium company would not support the product so at a

cost of millions of dollars to the government they had to

switch all the computers back to IBM which it seems is well

supported in Canada. I thanked my uncle for his information,

explained to him that I had not realized those thing and

told him I would call him back as I had another call coming

in. When I hung up I laughed till I had tears in my eyes.

We received a phone call from a girl who was complaining that her wordprocessor had stopped working.

Digging a little further, it transpired that she'd run out of disc space, and one of her colleagues had told her to delete some files to make some more space.

She didn't know which files to delete, so her colleague told her that anything in her work directory that she didn't need would be OK. This would have been OK, except that she was saving files to the MS Word directory.

She'd deleted WINWORD.EXE

Customer calls in. "I can't get my email, where is it, how do i get it?"

Me:"well sir, how are you trying to get your mail?"

Customer: " Ok, i'm at my browser thing (IE3) and i click on file, then open, then i type in my email address, and it says it cannot find it....................."

Me:"ok sir, do you see a button called "mail", click on that, then click on read mail..........what do you see?"

Customer: "...............what's this, i've never seen this screen before.........oh............wait.........there's some messages for me in here, how did they get in here?"

(Like a lot of you, my desk has large dents in the edge from repeated head beating.........)

These are things that customers have asked on our tech support line that could only elicit: "I have no response to that."

1) I'm reading here in your manual that your product only supports .ico and .bmp graphic file formats and does not support .gif or .jpg, so I was wondering why my .jpg file won't display on my button in your product?

2) Is there anyway I can put this on my computer without installing it?

3) I was in the control panel and I chose the Add/Remove Programs icon. I found your product listed so I clicked on it, it asked if I really wanted to remove it, and I said "Yes". So why won't it run anymore?

4) We bought 50 licences to your product but we want to have 100 clients connect concurrently, is there any way we can hack your program to do that?

and

5) I work at a company where we are trying to develop a program very similar to yours and was wondering if I could get a free copy of your source code?

As a journalism major in college who writes a newsletter and

does some editing here at the ISP, I laugh when I get tech

support email (which I answer) that shows the intelligence

of our customers. I got this one from a person who

does some computer work and recommends my ISP on a regular

basis. I really wonder who should be dealing in computers

if they can't communicate.

) Subject: Re: e-mail don't work

)

) On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, (tech who can't write) wrote:

)

) i am setting up (user's) computer fpr her and her mail don't work

)

) her user name is (username)

) her password is (deleted)

)

) i think it is set up propley on her computer she was able to send one

) message ok 1 hour later it tells her the password dont match fankell.

) when i try to send mail to her your mail server tells me that fankell is

) not valid. she can access the internet ok just can't send or recieve

) mail.

Customer calls in, "I don't think your software is working"

Me. "Really, what is happening?"

Customer. "Well, i got your cd in the mail, and i put it in the cd drive like it say's. And it started up, and told me i had to close any applications that were running before i continued...."

Me. "ok......."

Customer. so i went to "start", "shut down", and clicked on "shut down"........now all it says it is safe to shut down your computer........but nothing is happening"................

Don'tcha LOVE this job!!

It pays to ask the simple questions first. If you don't, a 5 minute call could *easily* become a half-hour nightmare... like this call, which I had earlier today...

(beep, beep)

Me: Hello, and thank you for calling [Large Mfr.]. My name is [John]. Could I get your first name please?

Her: [Susie Q]

Me: ok, ma'am, could I get your SupportID number please?

Her: I can't get it. I can't boot up my computer.

Me: you can't boot up?

Her: yes... and I'm not at all pleased with your products!

(What I wanted to say) yeah, well, the feeling is mutual :P

Me: ok, ma'am, what happens when you try to turn the machine on?

Her: nothing. Nothing! My monitor stays blank, and the light stays amber.

Me: Ok, ma'am, I want you to power-on the machine now.

Her: ok.

(Pause)

(several beeps in the background)

Me: Ma'am... what's that beeping?

Her: oh, that's the computer.. it's beeps when I turn it on.

Me: Hmm... when did this start happening?

Her: It started happening after I installed that new SDRAM we got at [National Reseller Chain]

Me: (doh!) hmm... would you mind removing that RAM for me ma'am?

Moral of the story: You get what you pay for! (Caveat Emptor!) (cheap RAM is exactly that... cheap ram)

Me: Hello, tech support how can I help you?

Customer: Every time I try to print using your

database it tells me I have performed an illegal operation

and it shuts off the program.

Me: Which of our products are you using?

Customer: She told me the name.

Me: What operating system do you use?

Customer: What's that?

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

Customer: What's software?

I like old people, don't get me wrong. They want to be a part of the technology and some do really great at it, some don't. This kindly gentlemen seemed to know what's going on, but then, since his ISP is part of a major phone company, there were some assumptions he made....

Me: Thank for calling Big Phone Co. ISP. How may I help you?

Old: Yes, hello. I'm going to be moving to a new phone number, 555-1169, I'd like to have my Internet service moved to that new number on August 15th.

Me: Well, sir, you don't need to tell us that you're moving. Your Internet service will work just fine.

Old: No no, I want you to know this so that there won't be a break in my service.

(All I'm thinking is that we're not the phone company...so, an idea hits me and I finish up my phone entry while telling him this)

Me: All right sir, what I've done is create a work order to have your Internet service moved from your current number to your new one by August 15th, so you should encounter seemless operation of your Internet service.

Old: Thank you very much!

Me: You're welcome, sir and thank you for using Big Phone Co. ISP.

Needless to say, I got a pretty hefty chuckle out of that one. Granted, it's not as good as the call I only heard about when a woman tried to install our software onto her Brother Electric typewriter... :D

I work for a very large computer manufacturer in the Tech Support department. I've been visiting this site often enough that I thought I'd heard it all, but here's one that actually has a happy ending. This story is one involving my supervisor, but it's firsthand, so here goes.

One of our customers had been having a lot of trouble with her notebook computer. Her case history is rather long, with repeated calls. To try and end her misery, it was decided to give her a completely new computer, and a newer model at that. My supervisor called her up to get the details from her, like where to send it and to get a credit card number for security. My supervisor said she had a "bubbly" personality. She was asking questions like how long it would take and where to send the old computer, etc. My supervisor responded with, "it will take 7-10 days to get a new computer out to you". Her reply was, "If I wasn't shacked up, I would bear your child!". While I've heard many sighs of relief, I think this one takes the cake. -sigh- another happy customer.

I used to do internal technical support within a consulting firm.

One day, a consultant brought me his laptop to work on. The laptop would not boot and he needed it soon.

Well, I worked on the laptop for three hours; stripping it down to its individual components and then rebuilding it. I finally got it to boot up, but the screen was fuzzy and many files were not accesable.

I went to the consultant to tell him that the problem might take longer to fix than I had originally thought. He looked at me for a second and said, "Oh, that's OK."

Relieved, I turned to leave his office when he called out my name. "Oh, by the way," he says, "I spilled some iced-tea on the keyboard. Could that have caused these problems?"

When I was working for a networking company in the Silicon Valley, we had a customer who's network would go down during the night for no apparent reason. The Tech helping the customer was the head of our department (a VERY important customer, I assure you) and she tried EVERYTHING. Finally, after a fews days of trouble shooting, she got so fed up she finally told the customer "I just found out, our network cards are afraid of the dark." Luckily, the customer thought it was funny.

Well I work for a Custom Computer making company as a tech support.

We also sell Wholesale parts and well some people like to "think" they can upgrade

we had a man come in who had just bought 32 megs of Ram and we mark inventory by

putting a yellow mark across it. Well this customer came in complaining that we sell

faulty hardware and told us his Ram had been leaking. So we simply refunded his money

and laughed as he came back complaining about leaky RAM, again.

We used to have Novell Print server installed on cheap PC before NIC's came out

for printer and once they were working we would just turn off the monitor. Well one day I find in

our Trouble call software a call about the fact that the Printer was not working.

What had happened was that this User had seen the screen was lit and since she knew that to print the screen

was "off" on the PC she turned the computer off!!!!

I work for an ISP. A Windows 3.1 customer called to complain that the file he downloaded last night from our FTP server, an upgrade from Windows 3.1's IE 2.1 to 3.0a, didn't seem to work too well. He said his computer was now booting into Windows 95 and it was coming up with lots of error messages about files missing that I didn't recognise.

I was a bit baffled by this so after making sure he definitly downloaded the 3.2Mb upgrade from our FTP server as opposed to downloading some copy of Win95 somewhere, I started to step him through the error messages hoping eventually we'd get something familiar.

Eventually things clicked into place when he said he got an A:\) prompt on his screen.

And things started to work when I told him to remove the floppy and restart, then install the upgrade! :-)

A customer called in saying that our product was terrible and that it had no documentation included to explain the installation. Fearing that our order department had mistakenly left out the proper files I asked the man "Did you get the readme.txt file that is supposed to be on the root of the diskette?" His response, "I don't read those damn things."

"Hello, Tech Support..."

"I'm having trouble making a backup."

"Oh? Are you using diskettes or a tape drive to make your backup?"

"I'm using floppies."

"Okay, well what sort of problem are you having?"

"Well, it asked for the first disk, and that went fine. Then it told me to put in the second disk, and that went okay, too. But now it's asking for the third disk, and I can't get it to fit."

A few years ago when I was working as an in-house PC

helpdesk for a chain of retail stores I received a call

from the manager of one of the stores enquiring as to why

his modem was making funny noises. Able to hear the modem

over the phone, it was going through a standard sounding

negotiation, but was lasting for some time. Before long

you could hear the 'number disconnected' tone coming in

over the negotiation. A clear signal that the attempted

connection had failed.

A problem with this particular brand of modem meant that it

would not time out and hang up, and as the store was waiting

for some important data, I got the manager to reach behind

it and switch it off, then on again.

I decided to keep an eye on the transmission from the

mainframe room, and it kept failing, time after time.

I called the store back, we got them to check all the

connections, and replace the modem with a spare from one

of the back offices, but it had the same fault.

We organised a technician to go to the store (which was in

a hick town in the middle of nowhere, so took him a better

part of a day to get there with the required data on a disk

and a pile of replacement parts in his briefcase) to see if

he could resolve the problem in time for the next days

trading.

He phoned back just as I was leaving for the weekend.

"You're going to love this!" he says.

It turns out that every attempt at comms after I

had first spoken to the store manager, he had leaped from

his chair, and turned the modem off, then on again, because

it was making that 'funny noise'...

I work at a college help desk. The college is in a small town, and some users are extremely trusting (or naive).

I had a woman call one night, explaining that she was an adult student and wasn't on campus much outside of classes. Because non-trads make up 25% of our enrollment, this wasn't a surprise. Her question, however, was.

Caller: "My Philosophy professor said he was e-mailing our next assignments. I won't be on campus until tomorrow. Can you check my e-mail and see if the message is there?"

Me: "Are you sure you want me to do that?"

Caller: "Sure"

She then gave me her username and password.

I checked her account, and the message was there. I read the note over the phone. I then advised her never to give out her e-mail password. Not even to Help Desk staff.

In a related story, I once had a temporary tech support job at a local bank. They were merging with another bank,

which caused some confusion. They changed servers the Thursday before a long weekend.

The Help Desk Staff found out the next day, when users were calling up wondering why they couldn't log in.

THe best call that day was from the head of the typing pool. All users now had unique passwords,

but she had tried to assign the same passwrd to all the computers in her department.

It kind of defetats the purpose of having a password, though I didn't tell her that.

Here's a sample conversation of what's been going on lately with my friend Jeff and his work on his Ham Radio page.

(ME) Hey Jeff, how's the page going?

(JEFF) Fine. Could you give me a copy of your Word 97? Some of the files these Ham Radio people send me are in that format.

(ME) Why don't you just have them save it in a different format?

(JEFF) I don't think they can. I need Word 97 to work on my page!

(I wanted to say, "Why don't you learn HTML like me? It's not that hard! I taught you once.")

(ME) I don't have Word 97 with me.

(JEFF) Can you get it for me?

(ME) My brother has it, but it's against the law anyway for me to do that.

(JEFF) Oh, come on!

(To this day, Jeff still does his Ham Radio page in WYSIWYG format, and he wants a copy of Word 97.)

I work for a national ISP and have heard just about everything. However, one of the funniest calls I've had was about 2 weeks ago.

It seems this customer was having trouble logging in to our service. He kept getting an error message telling him that his password was incorrect. After spending several minutes verifying that he was indeed trying to type in the correct password I asked what should have been the first question. "Do you have the caps-lock key on?". Since our passwords are case-sensitive, this is an important question. Turns out that was the problem and he was now able to get online.

What makes this call so funny is that just a few days before I had spoken with this person about the very same problem with the very same solution. Needless to say he was extremely embarassed. So much so that I doubt we'll here from him again.

Tech: Thank you for calling *international service provider*. How may I help you?

User: My mouse won't work, what is wrong?

Tech: We provide internet support, sir.. this is outside of our normal

support.

User: I can't very well connect to YOUR internet without my mouse and icons now, can I?!?

Tech: Hmm.. no icons? Ok, what happened, sir?

User: I clicked on something, and now my screen's all black, and

there's NOTHING TO CLICK ON! My MOUSE won't even show up! What do I do?!?

Tech: What icon did you click on?

User: I think it said MS something...

Tech: (amused) Is there any writing on the left, near the top, perhaps?

User: Let me look... Yeah! C, then some symbols!

Tech: Ok, sir. Type exit, and it should get you back to Win95.

User: (pause) I hit Escape, nothing happened!

Tech: (VERY amused) Actually, sir, you need to TYPE exit....

User: (makes noise on keyboard) (long pause)

Tech: Sir?

User: Nothing is happening.....

Tech: Did you hit enter, sir?

User: Uh.. no... (hits enter) Windows is restarting.. what does THAT

mean?

Tech: (blessing the mute button to hide laughter) It means your

mouse will work again, sir

In our place of business, we have a reasonable hourly rate combined with a fairly quick turnaround time. Our store has been praised by customers and even the salesman are getting over their ulcers. Occasionally we get a customer who:

1) After explaining on the phone our hourly rate and troubleshooting policy for non-(our store name) computers.

2) Explain how long the turn-around could be expected to be.

3) Customer will bring in __________ (you fill in the blank) non-clone system anyways for troubleshooting.

I got that person the day before yesterday.....

After explaining (the day before when he came in to casually ask) that if he did not want to pay the hourly rate and wanted some "things to look for" when troubleshooting his soundcard from home, told him to make sure drivers were current, card seated properly, etc.

Next, explained DMA, IRQ and PCI bus...and conflicting devices...SoundBlaster standard (almost just reaching under the counter for a text book to start class then and there...Customer thanks and leaves, says he'll try drivers and reseat card (said it would be easiest for him)

Yesterday....

Customer brings in computer...written discrepancy is "Possible sound card problem, computer locks up and reboots occasionally.

No problem, induct it into work cycle, open case and whoa...hard drive on only ide connector on motherboard, single speed cd-rom hooked to propriatery ISA sound card AND an ISA Ensoniq (with no ide connector) plug and play side by side...

Call customer back and tell him he has one to many sound cards and seem to have located source of lockup. Recommend keeping newer card and purchasing new cd rom (later)...or new sound card and CD rom. I also mentioned that since I charged for the hour anyway, the installation would be included in that hour...even if he took it home, waited til payday to buy new

soundcard and cd rom...give him system back, with receipt (noted when he was ready for part(s) I wouldn't charge labor twice for him...he liked that idea too). He paid and left.

Today...

Customer calls, really irate, wants to know what I DID TO BREAK HIS SYSTEM...now can't dial out with external modem....

Wish I knew he had modem problem along with sound card problem...All I did was check bios, remove the case and seated all cards, checked for conflicts...had no serial port conflicts...told him to next time bring ALL his stuff thats broke, not just piece at a time.

Tonight...

If he's still pissed in a.m., going to refund money, send him down road to place that charges about 2.5 times what we do and has a 2 week turn time...for them to tell him same thing...:?

I'm a technician at a big dutch computer store and repiar centre. We have a service desk where customers can bring in the broken stuff and get answers to some questions.

About 1 year ago a customer came in with the following question.

Tech.: How can i help you sir?

Cust.:I just bought a internal modem at your shop but i cant get it installed, can you take a look at it for me?

Tech.: Sure, if you just give me your computer and the modem i can have a look to see wath is wrong.

Customer walks to his car and brings in the modem and a monitor!!

Cust.:You see, i dont know where to put the modem, there are no oppenings or things in it where i can put it in.

Tech. thinking: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah there should be a law against those people, so that they cant buy computers and if the still try to buy they should get shot.

Tech.: Your modem will never fit in your monitor sir.

Cust.:(verry suprised) Why not???? It's a computer so it should fit. If it doesn't you will have to make it fit.

Tech. is now thinking to sell the customer a memory module to put in his head for upgradeding it's user memory.

Tech.: Sir that is a monitor, nobody can install a modem in a monitor. you will have to install it in your sytem unit.

Cust.: System unit, system unit??? I did not get that when i bought the computer.

Tech.: Yes you did, it's the part where your keyboard and all the other stuff is connected to.

Cust.: Ah you mean the big case that is use as a small extra table??

Tech.: Better not use it for a table.

Cust.: (getting a red face and feeling stupid)I should know that i have to put it in there. I dont know anything about computers, sorry to for my stupid questions and that i wasted your time with it.

Tech.: Nevermind sir it's my job.

A customer phoned the support desk I work on complaining that a game on CD that we had supplied him was not working. We'd had a few other problems with this particular CD so I asked the customer to send in the faulty CD, so that I could check if it was genuinely faulty, and replace it if necessery.

Upon receiving the CD, I found a large squashed insect on the data side of the CD. After cleaning it up and making sure it was OK, I sent it back to the customer with a note saying that I had de-bugged it, and that it was now ok.

The customer was well impressed!!!

I had a call from a client saying that when she typed C she got an E etc. She claimed it just suddenly started doing that and she hadn't done anything. Thinking she had some kind of keyboard overlay or alternate keyboard loaded, I had to go on-site. As soon as I looked at her keyboard I noticed the keys were all wobbly and some were missing. She said it was always like that. Finally, a co-worker at the next desk explained that the keyboard had fallen on the floor and a couple of keys fell off. Because the user wasn't sure where to put them back, she had pried the rest off and arranged them all in alphabetical order to make typing easier. After she called the Help Desk, the co-worker explained that moving the key cap wouldn't change what letter was typed. When I got there she was busy trying to move them back to their old locations.

So there I was, sitting at my desk, minding my own business and along comes yet another silly call.....

Me: Good afternoon, ((company)) Wolf speaking.

User: Hi, my manager messed with my computer and I can't log in.

*Said user's manager fsks with his computer all the time. I spend half my life explaining to this guy how to change what his screen saver says..(built in Windoze one)*

Me: What do you see in front of you?

User: The password box, but my password isn't working.

Me: What is the user name in the top box?

User: ******

Me: Try *******. *click*

The user had been trying to log in with his manager's username and his passwd. *rolling eyes*

This is the same user that can't seem to figure out where his "office toolbar" goes. I get that call about once a week.

Monday Afternoon-

Specwriter: "My screen is jumping side to side and doing this 'woosh woosh thing'. Could you fix it for me?"

Admin: "I'll take a look at it."

(By end of the day, the monitor was replaced with a spare)

Tuesday Morning-

Specwriter: "I need you to put my old monitor back on."

Admin: "Why?"

Specwriter: "I was working on a drawing when you replaced it, and I need to work on it some more."

Admin: "What!?"

Specwriter: "My drawing is still in the old monitor and I need it."

I had a customer who had recently had a bunch of monitors sent out because he got a "bad batch" he said that all the replacement monitors save one worked just great. The customer then proceeded to tell me that his company's tech people had looked at it and diagnosed that it was DOA. Since we have to go through a few troubleshooting steps before sending a part I asked him if he could do a couple of things with the system. The customer replied that he'd already told me that his company's tech people had looked at it. Fingers crossed, I asked the customer if he could just turn the brightness and contrast all the way up. The customer says "My maching says that Windows has a problem." Yup. So does your company.

I usually don't have to answer the phones at my company, but I always enjoy a little end-user humor.

One of our valient phone answerers fielded a call a few weeks back, about a user having trouble with

their floppy drive. Namely, the user said that the drive was eating up her disks, and not giving them back.

Needless to say, the person on the phone couldn't help them directly, but had a field agent go out

to the user's local office to investigate. It turns out that the user had not been inserting her

floppy disks into the floppy drive, but instead into the cracks between the plastic drive bay covers

on the front of her machine. Having realized this, the field tech opened up the case to retreive

the lost floppy disks, finding to his dismay two and a half boxes of diskettes dumped into the case!

I guess the user came from the "If it didn't work this time, I guess I'll just do it again until it

DOES work" school of thought!

A friend of mine didn't want anyone messing with his computer, so he, being the computer-litterate he is (or thinks he is), pulled out his switch. His brother, who figured out how to hot-wire the computer, by-passing the switch, got me into the computer. I wanted to show this "Mr. Computer Know-it-all" that he didn't know all he thought he did. So I set up his autoexec.bat file (he was running Win95) to change the prompt to "ERROR #25742:All Data On Drive C: Lost:Please Reinstall" and then to run command.com. He booted up his computer the next day, saw the prompt, and continued to reinstall everything he had on his computer before... People who think they are computer literate....

I do tech support for a major computer manufacturer in Sweden.

We support almost everything we sell, although most questions are simple ones about the operating system.

One morning, this guy called in and wanted to know how to clear the recent documents on the start menu.

Before I could tell him how to do it, he explained why he wanted to clear the menu.

Apparently the guy had used M$ Word to write a love-letter to some lady in the U.S.

His wife also used the computer, so he wanted to remove the evidence. The thing is, why tell me why he wanted to "clean up"? I would have helped him anyway.

This guy must be an exhibitionist or something... And oh yeah, he later called my colleague and wanted to clear the recent files in Word too. Turns out

the moron had named his document "loveletter.doc" :) This one had us laughing for quite a while!

Couple of years back I worked in large insurance-company as a tech support. One day this female secretary calls and tells me that they've ran out of copy paper at their department. It would take her at least 10 minutes to walk down to office supplies (wich was at the other end of the building) and get some more paper. So she asked if I could FAX her some paper to cover their acute need. I told her that we were running a bit low on paper and hang up and had a great laugh.

user: my pc doesn't react anymore

desk : ok try CTRL-ALT -DEL

user : doesn't help

desk : ok - then the best thing to do is to power-off

the PC to reboot. Just press the reset button or

power button (off, wait a second, and on) to restart.

user : ok, i did it, and now my screen remains completely

black

desk : are you sure you did reset the COMPUTER.

user : yes, it's the power button on the left-under side

of the screen. The thing belowe is just something to

put the screen on so i can see better.

-----------------------------------------------------------

sorry but my english isn't that good

This is an actual note on an actual call I took on 2/14/97.

The customer called after moving her system for the first time

in nearly six years....

Customer moved her system and now it will not come on.

Showed her where the big colorful switch that says "POWER"

is located on the side of the computer. Instructed her on

how to move it to the upright and locked, "power on"

position. System booted. Customer happy.

You can't make stuff like this up.

I am a graduate student in computer science, and I've put my hours in as a techie at various corporations.

Unfortunately, at school, they will hire just about anyone to run the computer help desk (there are seperate help desks for the other systems the school runs, like the cable tv etc). I know most of the undergraduate CS folks, and they don't work for the help desk. Often, it is English majors and Art majors who want (read: need) to earn money doing the job. They were probably "hotshots" in high school because they knew a dos command or two, and thus think they can work at a help desk. Needless to say, most of the calls are quite entertaining.

The college runs its own news feed, and it is horribly managed. And the Computer science department used to run its own news feed seperate from the college, but that ended last year.

Well, one afternoon, the news feed died. It had been quite flaky for a few days as it were. Being rather annoyed, I decided to call up the help desk.

Tech: Computing services, how may I help you?

Me: There seems to be a problem with the news feed.

(long pause)

Tech: You mean you aren't getting CNN ?

At this point, I gave up.

I WORK FOR THE LARGEST COMPUTER COMPANY. WHILE IN TECH SUPPORT I RECIVED A CALL DURING HIGH PEAK HOURS. I ANSWERED THE AS USUAL.

ME:THANK YOU FOR CALLING @#$% MY NAME IS SO AND SO , HOW CAN I HELP YOU.

CUST: YES I HAVE BEEN ON HOLD FOR 45 MINUTES, I WOULD HAVE SOLVED THIS ISSUE ON MY OWN. I HAVE TRIED TO LOOK AT BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY AND EVEN RESEARCHED ON THE WEB. THERE IS NO ANSWER TO MY QUESTION.

ME: THINKING, MAN THIS GUY MUST BE GOING THROUGH SOMETHING TUFF, SO I QUIT ALL OTHER PROJECTS I WAS WORKING ON AND DECIDED TO GIVE FULL ATTENTION TO THIS CALL. NOT KNOW WHAT THIS PROBLEM COULD BE.

CUST: WELL SEE HERE IS THE PROBLEM. I AM MOVING NEXT WEEK TO THE HOUSE THREE STREETS DOWN. AND I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO MOVE THE COMPUTER AND MY INTERNET, BECAUSE I DO HAVE THE LATEST AND THE BEST INTERNET, I PAID EXTRA FOR IT.

ME: I WAS LIKE WHAT, SIR U PUT THE COMPUTER IN A BOX , PICK IT UP AND MOVE IT WITH YOU. AND THE INTERNET GOES RIGHT ALONG.

CUST: THATS IT, U DONT HAVE TO GET SPECIAL BOXES SO THE INTERNE DOES NOT LEAVE THE COMPUTER.

ME: DYING LAUGHING AT THE CUST. "NO SIR THE INTERNET CANNOT ESCAPE FROM INSIDE YOUR COMP, ITS TRAPPED THERE.

CUST: OKAY THANKS.

ME: GOOD LUCK SIR.

Me: Contract software developer, internetworking....

Them: MIS for a previous client, tied to a Wintel worldview.

M: Hmmm guys, we ain't getting no email from the Internet.

T: Oh, we changed your mail server, you gotta tell everyone

who is sending you mail to change your email address.

M: GUYS! do you know what a proxy is?

T: Oh, you don't understand email... There's nothing in

the MicroSoft mail book about it.

M: You idiots! (as I drop on their desk a fresh photocopy of

Prof. Stevens' chapter on electronic mail protocols).

T: oh, you're just another old guy from the software dept!

Me..

Them: The ISP support for Pacbell (I have ISDN service).

M: Your DNS servers are down!

T: Oh no, we don't use DNS, we don't have static IP

addresses for our users.

M: What? Look, I can ping and traceroute from my machines

at home if I specify an IP address or if I use a hostname

that was cached last time.

T: Huh? ping? traceroute? hostname? what are you talking

about? Are you using a Mac? We don't support those.

M: I'm using Linux and NT in my home LAN.

T: We don't support home LANs. That must be your problem.

M: Don't worry... I got a firewall.

T: You got a fire in your house?

....

Them: The local cable company.

M: The picture quality is lousy. It looks like you are not

getting a good lock on the satellite and the codecs are

getting hosed.

T: Codecs?

M: Yeah, those boxes at the head end that take the input

from the satellite and do the MPEG decoding.

T: (long pause)... Hmmm, are you tuning to channel 3?

M: No! I'm not using a set top box. I'm sending it

directly to my monitor. I had it calibrated last week.

I'm telling you, it looks worse than VHS

T: What wrong with VHS?

So, you folks see, it ain't always one sided. Sometimes the

user knows a lot more than the support side.

Below is one of the best support questions I've received in almost 2 years of answering Support's email.

Support Question Follows:

To: (support@*?*?*?.net)

Subject: Pornography

My 20 year old nephew was over yesterday and I caught him viewing graphic pornography over the internet. Later, a window came up and said "this program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." What does this mean and is it legal to view porno on the internet in this area.

I am a programmer for a medium-sized organization in the field of data collection devices. I have been involved in and headed Software Development and Technical Support for aforementioned devices during the last ten years. Over that time period only two incidents come to mind, which I have not yet seen previously mentioned at this site, concerning TOTAL stupidity on the part of the End-User or Programmer of our products…

-----------------------------------------------------------

General Read Failure

================

User: I am trying to install one of your DOS-Based software products but it keeps reporting ‘General Read Failure: Insert Disk #2’. I have removed and reinserted the second disk over and over only to receive the same error message.

Me: Okay, then I’ll need to send you another set of diskettes, since your second disk seems to have been corrupted somehow.

User: Can’t I just switch the labels on the two diskettes, by slowly peeling the label off of the first disk then placing it on the second one and vice-versa? Then I can just place the one that says Disk #2 (after switching the labels) in the floppy drive and tell it to continue; right?

Me: Sure! If it works, please let me know!? ;)

----------------------------------------------------------

Give Me a Copy of Your Source Code

=============================

User: I’m having some problems with a program that I’m trying to write for one of your products. Could you possibly take a look at the source code and tell me if you can find anything wrong with the way I’m programming it?

Me: Sure. If the program isn’t that big, could you fax me a copy of the source code?

User: You bet. No problem. There aren’t that many files, I’ll fax you a copy of them right away.

Me: (Waiting by fax machine…)

Fax Contents Slowly Arrive As…

A single page consisting of a photocopy, yes a photocopy, of the users 5 ¼" floppy disk, yes the actual disk; but of course it was labeled ‘Source Code’, so you got to give them some credit!!!

Whoa! First place award for world leader in the land of the "tiny-brained" programmers!!!

Thank you for allowing me to submit my all-time two favorite "brushes with stupidity" stories.

I'm a network administrator for the military and just had a really interesting problem drop in my lap. One of the guys who works for me went to reinstall an NT workstation for one of our end users. He comes back to me about 30 mins later saying that he's having problems getting the machine to see the domain. I think "Hmmm, haven't seen this problem in awhile" so I go over and check for myself. I reentered all the correct info and get the standard invalid domain error message. Checked the connection to the network drop and its fine. Then my tech says "It said it couldn't find the network card during the detection phase."

Me: "What do you mean, it couldn't find the network card?"

Him: "Well, it said 'No Network Card Detected' when I ran the search for it."

Me: "Well, did you manually tell it which driver to use for the card?"

Him: "Yeah."

Me: "Which one was it?"

Him: "Don't know."

Me: (puzzled look) "What do you mean, you don't know?"

Him: "I just picked one at random."

I swear, no joke.

I am a computer technican for a fairly large company

which will not be named. I responded to a call from a user

that complained of paper jams. When I arrived at the user's

office he was on the phone, as I walked over to the printer

the user told me, "I ran some paper through it that I didn't

realize was stapled, and it hasn't worked the same since."

All I could do was press the form feed button and watch the

gears inside spin. How much is the training budget anyway?

I work as a PC LAN/Desktop support analyst at BIG INSURANCE

CORP. I received the following in a Lotus Notes email from

a rather befuddled user:

"While looking at my notes I accidently hit the 'end' key.

As a result, the titles of all my mail is no longer visible.

I can still read my mail, but I have no idea what I am about

to read (I'm clicking on the blank spaces) until I open

the mail. Can you help me?"

After laughing for five minutes, I went down to his

workstation for a mercy killing. I simply pressed the

HOME key. This returned the mail message titles to the

mailbox view. The user, obviously an intellectual pygmy,

was astonished. "What'd you do?!" he exclaimed. He looked

at me, eyes wide, as if I were a magician.

>From the other side of the coin comes a tail from a user.

user: My directX game keeps crashing.

Tech: Takes me through all the win95 ini files, has me check

control panel for conflicts, etc. etc.

Asks what my PC components are.

When she can find no obvious reason for the problem,

she simply states the AMD K5 CPU is not compatible.

(I fixed my own problem later when I changed the memory

timing settings in BIOS.)

Hello Computer service.

Hi this is xxxx, we need to have our computer monitor fixed.

It is realy dim. Could you send someone out to change the bulbs ?

Hello this is the supervisor.

Customer repeats the problem.

Ok we'll send someone out to replace the monitor.

Oh we can't just change the bulbs ?

As most of you may know, not all techs in technical support are bright. I received this call from a customer after he had spoken with one of our newer technicians:

Customer: I'm trying to run a Spanish Tutorial program to learn Spanish. Everything comes up on my screen just fine, but I can't hear the program speaking in Spanish.

Me (going for the obvious): Are your speakers turned on?

Customer: I'm using headphones.

Me: Where do you have the headphones plugged into?

Customer: Into the headphone jack on the CD-ROM drive.

Me: And this is a program, not a music cd?

Customer: Yeah.

Me: You need to plug the headphones into the back of the computer where your speaker is plugged in at.

Customer (after moving headphone jack): Oh! It works now. The last tech told me the program wouldn't work because this computer came with the English version of Windows '95... he said I would have to get the Spanish version.

Looking in the call log report, it was true... the last technician had even documented his stupidity.

It's hard to imagine that people who don't know how to turn their computer on would actually want to have full access to their bank accounts from their home computer. While working for a bank's online banking service I ran across this one.

Customer: I just received your software for Online Banking and installed it. How do I look at my accounts.

Me: Well, when you double click the icon, does it open the logon screen?

Customer: Yeah.

Me: Type in your bank card number and your PIN number.

Customer: OK.

Me: Now click "CONNECT"

Customer: I get a message that says XXXXX is unable to communicate with your modem....

Me: Ok, click "OK"... do you have an internal or external modem.

Customer: I don't have a modem.

(Oh, well don't worry... all of your account information for the next 5 years has been included on the one disk we sent you, just don't look at tomorow's information until tomorow!)

A customer called - again - couldn't get her e-mail

We did the usual check password, are you connected, e-mail configuration. She told me she had had problems with her e-mail the previous week, the telephone repairman had been in because they had to have some cable replaced but she had downloaded e-mail since. She asked me 'Do you supppose the last e-mail I received, it was very large, is still stuck in my telephone line.' I double checked that she meant what she had said. She expected there to be a bulge in the telephone cord somewhere. It was all I could do Not to ask her to trace the telephone cords throughout her 3 storey building, look for a bulge, and squeeze it out to a wall connection. I asked if she thought our current voice conversation stayed in the telepohne line. Thank heavens I got a No answer.

Me: Hello (ISP), (me) speaking.

Client: Yeah I'm getting pretty fed up!

Me: Ahhhh, ok. What seems to be the problem?

Client: I have been signed up with you people for

over a week and I still don't have your icon.

Me: (What the @#^$%?) Sorry, I don't understand? What Icon?

Client: Your ICON! I want your Icon on my desktop so I can get on the

Interweb.

(tried to cover the phone as I burst out laughing)

Me: Sir, have you installed any software from us?

Client: No. You mean now I have to install software? I'm sick of you jokers...(CLICK)

I guess dude wanted us to install a DUN connection by magic. (sheesh)

Background info: I'm a PC tech so friends of mine feel it

neccessary to call me with their computr problems.

A friend of mine wanted to remove AOL from his system.

We did and began the proccess of removing the directories

from his drive through DOS prompt.

Me: Are you at a C: prompt

Friend: yes, C:\windows

Me: Ok type in CD.. enter

F: Bad command or file name

M: try again CD.. enter

f: same thing Bad command or file name

(four times we do this on try five I notice that I am

hearing more than the 5 keystrokes for this command)

M: try again

as he does I count key strokes (I stopped at around 9)

M: what are you typing exactly

F: C D D O T {space) D O T {space} E N T E R then I hit the

{enter} key.

Moron, Idiot,

When I was supporting HP products I once had a call from

a gentleman who was trying to send a document with sensitive

information to his lawyer. When it was received at the other

end it was blank except for a few lines. He wasn't willing to

try sending the document to me so I had him send me another sheet

with text. I received it fine and so did his lawyer.

I asked questions about the colors used on the paper he was faxing

and it was just black and white.

Eventually after a little over an hour he tells me that the

paper is folded in half and stapled shut in three places.

When I asked him why he was faxing it this way he said it

was to keep anyone in the lawyers office from reading it before

it was done printing.

We had to send the fax into a repair shop to have the glass lens replaced because of scratches from the staples.

I had been working with an administrator to try and figure out why his fax on demand server would lock up every night at midnight. After a solid week of trials, re-installs, three different PC's, driver swaps, component swaps, nothing would solve this one lock up problem. He was obviously getting frustrated with the FOD solution and had requested that I make whatever attempts I could to get him some sort of refund for the whole thing. I told him the product manager would be out of town for 2 more days and would call him back with any news. Well, two days later and after a long explanation to the product manager, he agreed to give this customer a full refund. I called him back to give him the good news, and he told me not to bother.

I asked if he got the thing to work, and he hesitated a little and said "well ya sort of, the PC is still locking up at midnight. But I went to the hardware store and bought a programmable garden timer. I set it for ten after twelve, and it works perfectly. It locks up at midnight, then reset's itself at 12:10, reboots, runs the batch file I created and brings itself back up perfectly. So thanks anyway, we'll keep it!"

Amazing. Not only had I saved the company a few thousand bucks, but I had MacGyver doing problem determination on the other end of the horn!

This one had me shaking my head for a long time :)

I was helping a friend trouble shoot his mates computer.

The soundcard was having kittens over the soundcard (only worked in

some games etc. Win98 is oh so wonderful....)so I suggest getting

another card to try out. They duly did so and they purchased a PCI

soundcard. This is where the fun starts. The PCI soundcard

kept getting the error message 'Cannot recieve IRQ' or something

to that effect during the POST. So I spend more time trying to

fix that problem. No matter what I tried it kept spitting

this message at us. So I tell them to go the store they

got the soundcard from to try and get them to fix it.

A few days latter I get a message from my mate saying that it

could take a while to get fixed. The techie he spoke to said

that 'I don't do PCI' and they would have to wait for the

other techie to arrive back from somewhere.

Needless to say I sat there laughing my head off and shaking my head

in disbelief. Noting this computer was a Pentium II.

I don't know how morrons like this get jobs, I really don't :)

The problem was eventually worked out to be a probable BIOS

conflict (the BIOS wasn't new enough to handle the Soundcards

BIOS calls).

As a PC support person for a chain of retail stores I used

to get a lot of strange calls from store managers about

their PC problems. The following one really takes the cake.

me: Helpdesk.

mgr: Hi Rob, how are you?

me: Not bad (recognising voice) How's it going?

mgr: Pretty good, pretty good. Weather nice up there?

me: Yeah, quite nice. What can I help you with?

mgr: Oh right. Look, our PC's screen is on fire.

me: WHAT?

mgr: There's 3ft flames coming out of the top of the

screen. What should I do?

I realised he wasn't kidding when I heard one of his staff

being hysterical with a fire extinguisher in the background.

All credit to the guy for remaining calm in the face of

adversity, though.

TECH: TECH SUPPORT..

CUST: THE HARRICANE COMING WHAT DO I DO ABOUT MY NEW PC???

TECH: TAKE IT WITH YOU IF YOU CAN..

CUST: WHAT IF I CAN'T?

TECH: UNPLUG IT AND WRAPE IT UP..

CUST : BUT THAT WILL HURT THE PC , WHATELSA I CAN I DO ??

TECH : THAT ALL I KNOW AT THIS POINT..

CUST: INEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU SUPER...

RON

I work as a Sysadm/webmaster/postmaster for a Swedish Uni.

One of the scientist came in to my office and told me that he had problems with his e-mail.

So I went into his office and it didn´t take long before I noticed that the problem was that someone altered the TCP/Ip settings.

I got back to my office and the first mail I got was from the person I just helped, but I noticed that it was written 30 minutes earlier.

It said:

Subject: Email-problem

Hi Anders!

Thursday 15.30: I got problems with my e-mail. Can you help me?

XXXXXXX

I think just the punchline of this true story should be

enough:

"Oh, you mean people write computer viruses? They don't

occur naturally?"

I work in support for a large retail group in Western Australia. Some years ago when our stores were using floppies for back up we supplied all new sites with 4 3.5" floppies for back up which were labelled for each day of the week.

As time went on 4 disks were not enough and so the store would have to add more for each day.

I was on site one afternoon & happened to see the store admin "expert" use the first four disks & when he was asked to insert disk 5 he promptly used disk 1 again!!

I asked him how many disks he needed for backing up each day - he replied 8!!

"What do you do" I asked - answer I just put number 2 in and so on.

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"For the last 3 months or so"

My girlfriend works at the "incoming" desk at a national computer service company

One day an oriental gentleman brought his entire system in

because "the monitor is broke". She check these complaints by

plugging the monitor in question into her desktop to indentify the problems

that are actually in the computer itself. At the time this

gentleman arrived she had been viewing a picture attached

to an email that was pointing out the laziness of highway

workers who had painted a yellow line over a dead possum. When

this picture came up on the perfectly good monitor, the customer

of course said "You see! Monitor bad!" knowing that he had

NO such picture on his machine. She did a wonderful job of

explaining the situation while muffled laughter could be

heard from many cubicals behind her.

In college I worked for the Information Services Department

doing Technical Support for students, offering help by phone

and housecalls. I recieved a call from a confused student

who's "hard disk looked like his friend's hard disk". On

the scene I found out that the two roommates wanted to play

a network game between their Mac Classic and Mac PowerBook.

But instead of connecting them with a serial cable between

the printer ports, they had a 25 pin to 25 pin cable

connecting the two SCSI ports. They had rebooted and the

two Macs had a 'battle of the wills' as to which Mac was the

CPU and which Mac was the slave drive. The Mac Classic lost

taking on the hard drive icon and some of the files of the

PowerBook's HD. I have used Norton Utilities Disk Doctor

for years and I never before saw the field day it had with

these two hard drives.

One day we received a call from a user that said his hard drive was failing. He complained that it made a lound grinding noise every 5 minutes or so.

We dispatched a hardware tech to go check out the user's drive and he actually heard this lound "grinding" noise.

It turned out the user had placed his pager (in vibrate mode)on the back of the PC and had received a page. The pager would then buzz every five minutes to remind him that he had a page.

I was recently promoted to a job in a different department and a newly-hired secretary took over my old desk. On the first day, she called me in a total panic "The keyboard on your computer is broken! Why didn't you tell me?"

It took a few minutes before I figured it out---somewhere along the line, the key cap on the "E" key had fallen off and gotten lost--I'd never though anything of it, but it took me a few minutes to convince her that the key would work without the little cap.....

I work at a school system with extensive technology resources, but unfortunately the teachers are often low-level computer literate. One day, a teacher was yelling at me telling me I set everything up wrong and that their laptop wouldn't work. I recalled setting up his docking station and was confident there shouldn't be any problems. I then asked if the laptop was pushed all the way into the docking station (which seems to be a common problem). He responded "No." I then suggested that he try that, to which he responded, "But then I would have to get my docking station!" Puzzled, I asked where the docking station was and he said it was at home. After a while, I finally managed to convince him that the laptop was needed to use the docking station.

I work at a computer company in PA that specializes in hardware and software for other businesses.

As such, we deal with a lot of interesting problems since, per the companies' request, the users do not have access to normal desktops, communications or freedom of hardware.

This led to this interesting call. Prior to contacting my HelpDesk, he had purchased a printer that was not supported or allowed by his company. In order to set it up on the company's laptop, he contacted the manufacturer of the printer to walk him through settin it up via installation disks in the a: drive.

Him: We kept getting that the a: drive cannot be read.

Me: (In my assumption that the other helpdesk walked him through the obvious, and our laptops are not the best quality) Okay, sir. We can walk you through reseating the drive to make sure its communicating to the laptop correctly.

(I then walked him through powering off the laptop, pulling the drive out, putting it back in, etc. All to nothing)

Me: Okay. (Exasperated and humbled enough to try the obvious.) Let's trying accessing it again and give me the _exact_ error message.

Him: It say, "a: Drive is inaccessible".

Me: Does it have any buttons you can press?

Him: Yes, Retry and Cancel.

Me: (Weeping silently.) Is there a disk in the drive?

Him: No.

Me: Please insert a disk and try again.

Him: It's running! It's installing the printer!

Me: Thank you, please call the other HelpDesk.

Now this wouldn't be that bad except we know that our users are making over $60,000 a year.

I used to do tech support for a major modem company. Here are a couple of tech stories (yes, they are TRUE, although it is hard to believe!).

*Mistaken Identity #1: A customer was asked to return their internal modem for repair/testing. We recieved a box with just the phone cable inside - she thought this was the modem.

*Mistaken Identity #2: Elderly gentleman purchased a PC shipped with one of our modems. He thought the modem driver diskette was the modem.

*Customers frequently don't know the answer to the question: "Is your modem internal or external?"

*Our modems ship with fax software. One guy reckoned this software was necessary to hook him up to the Internet. I assured him it wasn't, and explained it was for sending and receiving faxes only. He responded "I don't believe you". I laughed, and replied that I wasn't making it up and have no reaon to lie. He wouldn't have this and hung up. I couldn't figure out why he had called me in the first place.

*One woman informed a fellow technician that our modems were "out of date", as she couldn't plug the phone cable into the line in port. She was trying to plug the wrong end in, and just couldn't fathom the idea of trying the other end. She preferred to call support after-hours panicing about an "urgent" problem she had.

Thats all I can think of for now...

While at work oneday I was asked what the best online service

was. I thought about it for a minute, thinking about the computer

skill level that the person had (none). I told them that I thought

a local one was. The customer then told me that they were using AOL

but were thinking about switching over to Netscape.

I am currently working as tech support for one of Norway's largest companies. Our resellers sell subscriptions to people all over Norway. I'm sorry I won't tell you what we sell, or what company I work for.

Anyways, once I got a call from a reseller trying to register a subscription to a customer. He got an error message, and tried to register again. I should probably tell you that our system is running on an extranet, and people use Netscape Navigator to register their customers in our system. He said he'd tried about 30 times, but he was NOT able to register that customer. He tried other people, they checked out perfectly, but the first one still didn't get through.

I called development, and they could not understand why it did not work. We have about 1000 resellers connected to our extranet, and nobody else had the same problem.

I called our reseller back, and asked him to fax me all the information on this customer. I got the fax, and me and my boss both checked it out. Then we noticed the birthdate was february 30.

We both laughed our asses off before I called the reseller and told him to get the correct birhdate. Then the customer checked out just fine...

Caller: It drops the internet connection every 5 minutes

Tech: OK. Let's check the network configuration.

Caller: OK.

Tech: Let's go into the Control Panel...

Caller: I am already there.

Tech: Double-click the network icon please.

Caller: I don't see it....

Tech: It looks like 2 computers and the printer...Scroll up and down to see it...

Caller: It's not there...

Tech: Well, if it is not there, your operating system needs to be reloaded...

Caller: You mean Windows?

Tech: Yep...

Caller: There it is, I see it now...

Tech: (Laughing with the "MUTE" button on...)

Tech: Tell me what is listed under configuration...

Caller: I have Client for MICROWAVE NETWORKS, two of those, Dial up adapter and tcp/ip

Tech:(Laughing) You mean Microsoft and Netware Networks?

Caller: I thought it was Client for Microwave Networks... because I bought my microwave online.....

This happened when I was doing software support for a branch office of a major engineering firm (about 300-350 people). I swear this is true, and it shows what can pass to some people as computer experts.

Our hardware tech had a message on his voice mail from the person in charge of monitoring our mainframe printers (two HP Laserjets), getting the jobs, stapling them, and sorting them for the mail people. This person had been the hardware tech previously until an extended leave. The voice mail went something like this (he let me listen in to this one):

"xxx, This is xxx. I think you need to come in here and take a look at this printer. It has gone crazy! It is spitting printouts all over the floor!"

After listening to this, the hardware tech went over to the printers to check this out.

Here's what happened. The person in charge of monitoring these printers (and that indeed was this persons ONLY responsibility) had gone elsewhere to talk on the phone, read, whatever. Meanwhile, printouts kept piling up until the pile became so high that the weight of the paper stack pulled was too much, and the top of the stack fell on the floor! It was when the hardware tech saw this that he brought me in on this one. We were laughing for days at this one.

This same former hardware tech had at one time spent over 9 months trying to get a CDROM (one we pulled from a Gateway Pentium with its sound card) to work in a Compaq 386 for which it was needed. This person was totally unsuccessful. One time when the person wasn't in, I went in, hooked it up, loaded drivers, and had it running in no time at all (I think 15 minutes - 10 to undo what the person had done to it, 5 to do it correctly). I showed this to a couple of other people in the department, just so they could enjoy this whole episode a little more. I then undid it and left it where the person had left it previously, and we got many more months of laughs from the person's attempts.

In my time in support, I ran into these to semi-related episodes many times.

The first is a familiar one to all of you... Somebody calls me with a message along the lines of:

"Hi. My monitor is broken. Bring me a new one."

"Is it plugged in and turned on?"

"Of course, I checked everything. Bring me a new monitor."

I go to their desk, press the power button on the monitor (the users always used the power strip for turning everything on), and walked away.

The other one is back from the days that 486s were big.

The calls for these went:

"Hi. My computer is real slow. Come and fix it."

Every time, it happened that the Turbo switch (yes, back when those actually did something!) was always off, turning their 33 or 66MHz computers into 8MHz or 16MHz computers. Almost all of them would ask me not to tell anybody that it happened to them, that they were so embarassed that they didn't figure this one out (even when I asked them to check the turbo button specifically).

I work 1st line help desk. Occasionally people lock each

other from accessing files, and we send messages to their

terminals (usually a standard "Please move out of the screen

you are working in, you are locking somebody. Thank you".

After sending this message to one of the employees, we

received the following e-mail message from them:

Tony,

I got a message from you in VAI asking me to please move my

screen. Was this supposed to be directed to me? If so,

do you mean my monitor? Where am I supposed to move it to

and why?

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, gotta love the stupid ones ;)

I was working in Tech Support for a medical software product that runs in the Unix operating system. One day an office manager (the doctor's wife, actually) called with a problem that required me to walk her through some Unix commands over the phone. The command I was trying to get her to type was "chmod 666 /dev/tty1A". Every time she typed the command she got an error message. We were both getting exasperated, and I finally decided to walk her through the command one-character-at-a-time! "Press the letter 'c'. Now press the letter 'h'. Now press the letter 'm'. Now press the letter 'o'. Now press the letter 'd'. Now hit the spacebar. Now press the number '6'. Press it again. Press it again. Hit the spacebar again. Now type a forward slash. She interrupted me, "Maybe this is the part where I'm getting confused...is that 'forward slash' with a capital 'F'?

Arrrrgggghhh!!!!

I just want to mention that I may have the temp file record.

A while ago, when I worked for a PC company, I had a client

who had bought a computer and scanner from us. I trained

them on the use of the computer, and the scanner.

Because people often get frustrated when dealing with large

image files, I always tell people that, unless they absolutely

have to, 300 dpi is more that enough resolution to scan at.

I then show them how large image files get when you scan at

more that 300 dpi.

Anyhow, about 3 days after this customer had received his

computer, he called and said that they were getting all kinds

of errors, and it was impossible to work on it. Since he

had only had the computer for such a short time, I was sent

out to his office ASAP.

When I arrived, I asked if anything unusual had happened.

He said "No." I then proceeded to check out the computer.

As I worked on it, I noticed that it was pretty slow.

Especially for a PII 233. I checked the hard drive, and found

that out of 6.3GB, the customer only had 500K left. The rest

was taked up by 5+ GB of temp files created by Photo Deluxe.

When I asked what resolution they were scanning at, he replied

2400 dpi, 8 1/2 X 11, and Full color. Needless to say, the

computer took forever when altering the pictures, and the customer

was turning the computer off thinking that it had locked up,

causing Photo Deluxe to leave its working files on the hard

drive.

I deleted the temp files, and everything worked fine.

For 3 more days until he once again filled the hard drive up

with temp files by doing the same thing.

A customer brought in his computer complaining that the CDROM

Drive no longer worked. I put it on the bench, and tested

it out completely. Everying thing was OK. I then called

the customer and asked if it was all CD's or just a few.

He informed me that it was only a few, so I asked him to bring

in the cd's and I would check them out on another computer

to see if they were the problem.(I was fairly certain that

they were.)

When the cd's arrived, there was no need to try them in a

different computer, as there were many placed where you could

look straight through the metal on them.

This happened at my previous job at a satellite

office. I laugh like crazy whenever I think about it.

We were doing some routine software setup in an office,

when the director of the office decided to let us in

on a little helpful trick she had picked up. It seems

that if you turn the brightness down on your monitor, it

will save toner on your laser printer!