Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

While teaching someone how to use their first mouse they were having quite a problem mastering the hand eye coordination between the mouse and the pointer, not to mention proper clicking technique.

After tens of minutes of unsuccessful practice he finally threw his hands up in disgust and said " Just tape that sucker down, where it needs to be, and leave it there!!"

He never did get it and now has his wife do his mousing for him.

A very good job I had through engineering school provided me with alot of expierence and customer interaction. One system I was installing was a large network of LED displays that when setup, would provide latest Dow Jones stats to a large team in the insurace company that purchased the system.

We had some diffuiculty in the installation of the hardare, but a soon fixed bug in the software presented some early problems. The displays would lock up, and only a reset would bring the system back to normal operation.

One day while talking to Donna, who's desk the main PC was setup on, I asked her to reset the sytem by unplugging the display and letting the PC re-establish communication to it. She mentioned that even after several times, the display did not change. I traveled accross town to remedy the situation.

Donna had been unplugging the calculator on her desk, and couldn't hear the obivous "cha-cha-ka" as the printer spool intialized. A quick reset, and finally a upgrade of sofeware, fixed the problem.

This is seriously one of the funniest things i've ever heard. On Sept. 1st I made a phone call to AOL tech. support about a proxy problem that existed because of AOL's slow servers. I already knew that was the problem, but I called to see what their reaction to that would be.

I want to remind you guys that this all really did happen. I swear!

After about 1 minute of being on hold, this is approximately what happened:

AOL: How may I help you?

Me: Well, I am having a problem with my internet connection. I use the web quite alot and very frequently I get error messages from my browser that say things like "Connection reset by peer." I have used Netscape, IE, and even the integrated browser. I've tried many different sites, even major search engines and even my own web site, and it still does that quite frequently.

AOL: Hold on..let me check the database. :::1 minute pause:::

AOL: It looks like something is wrong with your browser preferences. You might want to check them.

Me: Exactly what would I want to "check" in my browser preferences?

AOL: Your proxy settings.

Me: But exactly what would I want to check about my browser's proxy settings?

AOL: Go to Control Panel and choose Internet.

Me: ::reads off MSIE4's proxy settings::

AOL: Sounds right to me..I take that back about the browser settings being wrong..it's probably because the site you are trying to access has Java or CGI and there's something wrong with the parser.

Me: The most advanced thing on my site is frames. No Javascript, no Java, no CGI, not even a little DHTML. I doubt it's a problem with the Java parser.

AOL: In that case, you should re-install the AOL 3.0 software.

Me: I am using AOL 4.0.

AOL: Oh..re-install the AOL 4.0 software, then. Try reinstalling your browser, too.

Me: OK..thanks. By the way, what's the keyword to cancel my account?

AOL: I believe it's keyword CANCEL.

::that was the point that I hung up::

Back in the days of yore, I was a computer technician for a computer retailer in a small town. One day my boss brought in a computer belonging to a 'friend', and said, "Can you check it over and make sure everything's working ok? My friend said he dropped it."

Hoo boy, I thought to myself... So anyways, I begin to check over the computer (an old 386 with VGA monitor). Powers up fine... no errors on the HD... nothing broken or loose... no rattling in hidden places. :) So I write up a report, and pack it up with a tag saying done.

Later on, the customer picked up the computer and took it home (free of charge, BTW, because he's a 'friend') and tried it out. I get a call from the customer saying, "The computer is not working. Nothing comes up on the screen."

I quiz the customer, "Did you plug everything in? Do you see a green light on the monitor? On the computer?" The customer says, "Yes I plugged in everything, and I see a light on the monitor, but none on the computer." "Did you plug the computer in? Is it connected to the wall outlet?", I ask. "I told you, yes I made sure everything's plugged in. I thought you said that this thing was working ok?"

Sigh... "Ok, bring it back, and I'll check it out again." Later on, the customer brings the machine back in. "Here you go. Can you take a look?", the customer asks? "I'll be able to take a look at it once I'm done with this job, in about 10 minutes. Come on back then, and I'll figure it out.", I say to him while my nose is stuck in another machine. After he leaves, I finished what I was doing quicker than I thought, so I switch over to his computer.

A quick glance, and I'm smacking myself in the head... Have you ever seen the power supply on an AT class computer? It has a male and female three prong plug, for the power cable. The male plug was for the cable to the wall socket, while the female was for old monitors that used a pass through cable. Well, his monitor used a pass through cable with both a male and female end. Doh! The cable was plugged into both sockets on the power supply, looping back on itself.

The customer comes back in, and I ask, "Is this the way that you hooked up the computer? Exactly like this?" The customer warily says, "Yes..." I point out the looping cable, and nicely put that the computer cannot power itself. The customer says, "Boy do I feel silly..." Grinning through clenched teeth, I say, "Don't worry, happens all the time..."

This is a reply to "Follow the Directions Pinhead":

Clear Fingernail Polish DOES allow Dymo Label Tape and more modern P-Touch Tape to adhere better to the usually "crakle-coat" finish or texture on most printers (as well as monitors, PC Cases, etc.) Don't leave home without your trusty bottle of clear fingernail polish! Of course it always seems more humorous when the Tech is male and the checkout clerk is female!!

tech: Yes, how may I help you?

client: I deleted Windows.

tech: You deleted Windows? You, mean that you deltree Windows.

client: No, I deleted, because I kept getting fatal

exceptions. I'm an old Dos boy.

tech: Sir, you didn't have do that.

client: I know, that now. I'm just trying to get my system

back up.

tech: Ok, do you have your startup disk?

client: I didn't make one, because I'm didn't think I would

need it.

tech: Well, let's see.

client: I did make a copy of dos from my laptop. Is it the same?

tech: Well, yes and no. The configuration is different.

After Renaming the autoexec.bat and config.sys and rebooting the

the error msg ( the dos version you booted your system is not

comp w/ your windows).

tech: Sir, we're going have to make a startup disk from a

friend's computer that has the same Windows that you

had on you system. After, that call back and we will

step through reinstalling the operating system on your

system.

Gave closing,hung up and laugh out loud..

I was at IBM when I came across that lovely lady ...

"

-'morning Technical support, how can I help you?

-Well, I have a problem with the screen of my boss's Thinkpad.

-What sort of problem ma'am? Can you see anything or is it blank?

-No, no. I can see everything running fine but it's yellow.

-Yellow?! Is that a colour display?

-Yes it is!

-What was the last thing you did?

-Nothing, I swear. I just turned it on!

-Have you touched the desktop settings at all?

-No!

-Have you touched the colour settings and turned the red off by any chance?

-NO, I have not touched anything.I was reluctant when my boss,

who's on holiday, asked me to take it home with me so that I could

check his mail in the evening. I don't want to mess up with it.

All I do with it is turn it on, check the mail and turn it back off asap.

-I suppose we can try to check whether you are using the right resolution and refresh rate.

-That would be grand! How do I do that?

-Well What operating system are you using?

-What what?

-Are you using OS/2, DOS+Windows 3.1 or Windows 95?

-I don't know?

-Is there a start button anywhere on a grey bar?

-No!

-Is there a menu at the top with "File..."?

-Yes, there is just that!

-OK. Then, There shoud be an icon called ".....

...after 20 minutes...

-So this is not it then?

-Well no, everything is set fine!

-Can't do anything?

-I'm not sure. We're going to try anyway. Video drivers maybe,

though highly unlikely! Let's try!

-I'm all ears.

-Did you boss leave you a set of diskette before going away?

-Don't think so. Unless they are in the office!

-Never mind! If your boss did not mess up himself, we should be able to

create the ones we need from images stored onto your hard drive...

-Pardon me? Could you run that all over again and a bit slower please?

-Arch, don't worry! I'll take you trhough it. Follow my instructions...

... 15 minutes later ...

-Takes a long time, couldn't you phone me back, I'm phoning from home?

-Well, sorry! Your call's local. Mine if I call you would be international.

I am in Scotland. It should not take much longer anyway...

... 20 minutes later ....

-Well, that was tricky!

-No ma'am, you did just fine! Problem is you still have a yellow screen.

I simply can not understand. There must be a hardware problem somewhere.

-Does that mean it's broken?

-I'am afraid it could. Maybe you should get it checked.

-How much is this going to cost me though?

-It says in my database this machine is still under warranty. There should

be very little reasons why it should cost anything.

-As in what?

-As in if it was your fault, it wouldn't be covered. But as it isn't..!

I think you should turn it off and phone this number to arrange getting it picked up.

-It's turned off already. And you're right, that must be hardware: it's even still yellow now.

-WHAT? You mean it is yellow now the machine is turned OFF?

-Y..es!

-What kind of yellow that is?

-I don't know, kind of an arc of a circle I guess.

-It is not yellow all over.

-No, I never said that!

-Indeed, but you could have from the start. Think hard, what did you do with this computer?

-Nothing, Told you.

-Your boss did not leave it to you like this did he?

-No, it was fine yesterday.

-So, something must have happened in between. Where did you leave it?

-On my desk at the office.

-And?

-And nothing!... oohhh, maybe...

-Maybe what?

-My desk is such of a mess that I could not find a spot to put my hot plate, straight out of

the microwave - my take-away was cold, and I think, no in fact I am sure I put it on it... Could this be...

-Well sorry but yes it is! You just burnt the display of a £6000 machine. There is nothing we can do for you,

and certainly not on the phone, but replacing that LCD display. Hope your boss likes you...

I work for a local government that has recently outsourced its IS support to a BIG name company (I?? - no not that one, the other one). I heard a story the other day that makes me ready my application to join them...

A high-paid technical guy was on site looking at a problem and having difficulty resolving it. In desperation he phoned a colleague

) OK, what you should do is look in the BIOS..

--) Where is that? Is that when I run ScanDisk???

No wonder I still support half my department...

About 25 years ago Radio Shack was in competition with Lafayette Electronics.I wonder who won.. One day I went to the service counter of Lafayette, and asked if they had model XYZ in stock.The tech started to ask me a question , when the phone rang. He picked it up and said "Let me check", put the phone down and started talking to me again. A few minutes later, I said "Aren't you going to answer that call?" The tech said "Oh yeah" and picked up the phone saying," I just checked the stockroom and we are out of that model", and hung up!! So I proceeded to remind him if model XYZ was in stock. He said "I'll check the stockroom right now and be right back"

I walked out and went to Radio Shack.

A friend of mine went to help his boss who was complaining that Windows NT was running real slow. A quick look at the taskbar showed a multitude of email messages racked up at the bottom. So, he assumed that too many programs open was causing the slowdown.

So, he starts clicking these taskbar entries and closing them and more and more just keep appearing. It turns out that the boss was hitting the minimize button since he got his email (months ago) instead of close (he never logs off). He had over 300 messages all open at the same time - every message he'd ever received. No wonder NT was grinding...

ps, then there was the other guy with 3,087 temporary files in his temp folder....

Andrew

User calls and tells me that the design of a mouse is realy awful. I asked him what the problem was and he said he couldn't see his mouse pointer when he was using his mouse. Although when he put his mouse down he can see it fine.

To bring a story to a quick end he was placing his mouse flat against the screen covering the pointer and moving it around that way.

A lady was having problems loading one of the courses we provide on computer disks so she called me. In a heavy Texas drawal she would proclaim, I don't have thaaat. As I tryed to talk her through the installation I would refer to icons on her desktop. I don't know what she was looking at but she lead me to believe she was looking at the monitor. Finally I asked her to press the control, alt, and delete buttons to determine what applications were open. She said she didn't have that. I said on the lower row of keys, on your extreme left you should see the control button abbreviated Ctrl. She said she didn't have that. I said Ma'am do you have a keyboard. She said , "Oh! I didn't know you wanted me to look at that, I was looking at the screen.

When helping with our Tech Department in the ISP I worked for, I received a call from a very confused and frustrated elderly lady. After repeated attempts to find out what the problem was she finally blurted out, "When I'm on the information superhighway how to I get off? Will there be signs?".

She had obviously heard the term Information SuperHighway one too many times and took it literally.

I had been working as a technical sales rep at a largish

computer store. One day, our receptionist phoned in sick

and was replaced by a temp for the day. I was in a rush to

get to a meeting across town and I had a very important bid

to get out so I put the bid (about twenty pages in all) in

an envelope and wrote the name and fax number of the

tenderer on it. On my way out of the office, I handed the

envelope to said receptionist, asked her if she could fax

this to the number on the front, and then left for my

meeting.

That afternoon I returned to the office having had a

reasonably sucessfull day to see that the fax machine

was being operated on by a field engineer. I found

the receptionist and asked what had happened. She held up

the envelope that I had handed her only hours before.

What I saw was a mangled, bent, ripped envelope with my

bid still inside. It seems that said receptionist thought

that by faxing the envelope filled with papers, she was

being more efficient than doing it one page at a time.

The Pissing Monitor

This one sounds rather weird and quite frankly it is. I use to work for a reseller in tech support. One of the salesman had just finished a contract of selling 25 17" monitors.

Day 1: I receive a phone call from one of the users at the company the monitors were sold to and they told me their monitor was 'peeing' all over their desk. After wiping the tears from my face I tell them that is impossible because there is no liquid at all inside a monitor. I tell them to check for any liquids that may have been spilt near the monitor. They agree and hang up.

Day 2: The user (l is invisible) calls back and says the monitor had gone pee over her desk again. I ask if there were any galsses of water nearby that had leaked or been spilt. They reply quickly with a 'no'. At this point I am instructed to go on site and look at the problem. When I arrive, sure enough, there is water around the base of the monitor. I elevated the monitor and told them to keep any liquids away from the monitor. I also checked the ceiling tiles above for water stains, none to be seen.

Day 3: User calls up first thing in the morning telling me the monitor pissed on her desk again. Baffled by this I go back on site and sure enough there is a puddle of water around the monitor. Thoroughly pissed off I climb on the desk and lift the ceiling tiles up. There is a water pipe above the lady's desk. There is condensation on the water pipe, but there is no water stain on the tile above her desk. I replace the ceiling tile and look at the metal bracket holding the ceiling tile. Oddly there is some kind of residue on the metal bracket like water had evaporated from it. I follow the residue 15 meters to the other side of the office where there is a water stain on a ceiling tile. It turns out water from the pipe was falling on this ceiling tile and running 15 metres along the small metal brackets to this lady's desk and falling right on top of her monitor.

Strange but true.

Old time rock and roll.

I was instructed to look at a printer purchased by a customer stating that it printed nothing but 'garbage'. Fortunately this customer only lived about 10 minutes away, so the whole problem was solved in a short amount of time. The printer originally started out in my tech office.

Test 1: I hooked up the printer and it tested fine. Couldn't find a problem anywhere. Contacted the customer to pick up printer.

Test 2: Customer shows up in the office with printer and disk stating that the printer would not print a document on the disk, well, it would, but it would look like garbage. I hooked up the printer and loaded up Word and printer the document. No problem found. Document printed AOK. Customer frowns and takes printer home.

Test 3: Customer shows up in office with printer, disk with document, printer cable and computer. I hook up the computer, printer, load his word processor and print the document from his disk. No problem found. Prints AOK. The customer, looking sheepish and idiotic at this point states that I did everything he did, but all he gets is garbage (he shows me the printout and it is nothing but garbage). He sheepishly takes his computer home.

Test 4: I receive a phone call asking for an on site service call to repair his printer, it is printing nothing but garbage. A few hours later I arrive on site (had other work to do) and check out his computer. It is set up exactly the same way I had it set up in the office. Tested the printer... nothing but garbage. 'Odd.' I say, this is exactly the same way I had your computer set up in the office. 'I know.' replies the customer. I try printing the document from his disk... garbage. WTF? I sit staring at the computer and begin tapping my finger to the beat of the music coming from the radio beside his computer. I look at the radio and frown. 'Wow that is an old radio' I said. The customer goes on telling me how his grandfather had built it during the war. I unplug the radio and test the printer... no problem found. Tested AOK. I plugged the radio back in and tested the printer... nothing but garbage. I tell the customer to get a CSA or FCC approved radio to set beside his computer.

I was working as a tech support consultant once for a

company in the airline industry. I got a call one afternoon

from a user complaining that she wasn't receiving any email

that day, although she regularly received messages every

day. We did have a problem with the email link in the

morning but it had been resolved quickly, so users had not

been notified about it.

I set out to see the user's station to see if something

was blocking it from there. As I'm working on her machine,

from over my shoulder she asks in a serious voice "Do you

think that maybe it's because of the postal strike?"

I couldn't face her for fear of bursting out in laughter.

I didn't know the Post Office now delivers email!

We built an application a few years ago when 386sx was fast. As part of the appliation is had a backup menu which started the standard DOS backup program to backup the database files.

The companies called back a few months later to tell us the application was not working. We send a person over and they determined that the database should be restored from the backups. The backup was beening stored on floppy disks, so the support person ask for the last backup floppies. The user gave the support person two floppy disks.

The support person ran the DOS restore command and inserted on of the floppies to see which was backup disk 1 of the backup set. Neither floppy worked, upon closer examination, he determined that one floppy was disk 4 and the other was disk 5.

We ask the user if their was more floppys and she replied no. We ask how she was doing the backup.

She said she would choose the backup option from the menu and when prompted insert the one floppy disk. When prompted she would insert the next floppy disk. That was what she was suppose to do, but a couple of months ago, it started as asking her to insert the next floppy so she put in the first floppy.

Now she alternates back and forth between the two disks 4 times.

Upon returning from a short vacation last week I attempted to dial into my ISP and retrieve my e-mail. Having unsubscribed from most mailing lists prior to leaving, I figured the load would be light.

After connecting and starting Eudora, I received an error message when I tried to retrieve my messages. After a few unsuccessful tries, I called the tech support line.

The person I spoke to said that she would look into it and call me back. About fifteen minutes later the fun began:

Tech Support: Hi, we found your problem

Me: O.k., what was it

TS: You have a ton of e-mail in your in-box and the sysadmin has put a block on you downloading it. I'll have to go through each message with you and you can tell me what to delete.

Me: Say what? How many messages are in the box?

TS: About a 100, boy you get a TON of e-mail.

Me: 100 over nine days isn't very much

TS: Well it's a ton, anyway, let's start going through it.

Me: I don't really want you to read my e-mail, are you sure I can't download it?

TS: No, I don't think so, it's too much

Me: 100 messages really isn't that much, besides, when I download them I remove them from your server.

TS: Really? Hmm, let me check again, hang on

tap..tap..tap..tap

TS: Let's review your settings, o.k.?

Me: Sure, but I haven't changed anything on my end, has anything changed on yours?

TS: Oh yeah, I completely forgot, what mail server are you using for POP?

Then she proceeded to tell me how the mail server that I was using has been renamed and that I must change my settings to reflect the change. After a few minutes my "TON" of e-mail starts smoothly downloading.

I guess my ISP needs a little better training program. :-)

While I was in the Air Force, I use to handle the tech support for my Wing. One day I was cleaning up some computer viruses from a pilot's computer (these guys love to play games on their computers :-} ).

ME: Sir, you need to be careful about bring disks from home. If you do bring something from home, check it for virus.

PILOT: Are these viruses that bad? Are they easy to catch?

ME: Yes, viruses can wipe out your data or your computer, and yes they are very easy to catch.

PILOT: Can I catch a virus?

ME: You mean you personally? Catch a computer virus?

PILOT: (With great concern on his face..) Ya

and we let these guys fly????

I work for Kodak in tech support for the Kodak Picture Maker, a

turnkey, touch-screen enlargement and picture copying station.

One of its features is the ability to add designed borders to your

picture.

One call we recieved, the caller wanted help loading new borders.

We began:

Support: "Press the setup button on the screen, the press System

Configuration"

User: "OK. Put the CD in now?"

Support: "Yes, then press 'Install Designed Borders'"

User: "It says 'Loading Thumbnails, please wait'"

Support: "And we will. On the next screen, when it's done loading,

you'll see the borders you already have on the left, and the new

borders from the CD on the right."

User: "Is that my right, or your right?"

Good Grief!

[TRUE STORY]I am a consultant at a VAR and we do phone support for our customers. I once got a frantic call for support from some random user who HAD to get some Windows Write files back.

The call went something like this:

Me: XYW corp, this is Rick, what is the problem?

CUST: I need to get my Windows Write files back and I can't find them.

Me: What had been done to the computer recently?

CUST: I lost my Main Group (yes, Windows 3.x) and I called the place I got it from and we want through some steps to get it back, but now I can't find any of my Write files.

Me: Do you have a recent backup?

CUST: No, I've never done a backup

(why was I suprised?)

Me: How many files are we talking about?

CUST: I don't know how many, but it is all my business records for that past couple of years. (Business records, no backup, Free brain-damanged editor.........)

Me: Have you tried searching for them?

CUST: No, I looked for them in the Windows directory where they always are.

We go off to DOS and do a DIR *.wri /s. No luck.

Me: OK, your files may have been deleted, but you may be able to un-delete them.

Cust: OK, but I really need these files.

We go off to DOS-land again and try an undelete. Nothing.

Me: OK. Lets go through everything you did with the other guy, step by step.

Cust: Well *** is the assistant manager, and he had me re-install Windows.

Me: That's odd, reinstalling Windows doesn't delete files from the directory. What *exactly* did you do?

Cust: Well, I quit Windows to DOS, then he had me run a DELTREE command...

I broke in and tried to *gently* explain to the gentleman that the deltree command deleted all his files and the reinstall of Windows had written over the deleted area, so there was a vanishing chance we could recover his text files from the disk.

He hung up the phone muttering something about a lawsuit.

While I was working on the internal helpdesk of a large national stock brokering company, one of my co-workers took a call from one of the branch managers.

Tech : Hello, this is XXXXX, how may I help you today.

User : Oh hi, this is XXXXX.

Tech : Hello XXXXX how can I help you today.

User : I was off work for the last 6 weeks because of maternity leave. When I came in this morning & tried to power up my computer. I can hear the beep and I can see the light blinking (the harddrvie light), but I cannot see anything on the screen.

Tech : Ok, can you...

User : (user cuts off the tech) Can you just call Vanstar to come fix my computer, I don't have time to talk to you to fix this. I've already spent the last 3hrs trying to get it working.

Tech : Ok, can you please press the power button....

User : (user cuts off tech again & is starting to get a little irritated) I told you already, I've already tried that several times.

Tech : XXXXX, PLEASE!! press the power button on the monitor.

User : (deep sigh) OK!! (a few second goes by) You mean all I had to do was turn the monitor on?!?! I thought the computer turned the monitor. Well, ok, bye *click*

We couldn't believe the tech when he told us, so we called the guy who takes care of the logger's & had him dump the call to tape. Hehe, this whole conversation lasted just about 45 seconds.

We recorded the whole conversation to .wav format, edited the .wav to remove the names & sent it out to all our other fellow helpdesk associates in other parts of the company!!

So while we were still there, we affectionally called this scenario "Pulling a XXXXX"

TS: CD-ROMs, Inc., can I help you?

Cust: I bought this #amn CD-ROM kit for over $300 %*ckin dollars and it doesn't work!! What kind of *+it are you guys trying to pull!

TS: Sir!

Cust: I just spent the last 3 &*ckin hours installing this #$mn thing - a total waste of my #*cking time!

TS: Sir!!

Cust: You ^%mn well better be ready to give me my money back! Who the &ell do I talk to to get my *&ckin' money back!?

TS: SIR!!!

Cust: WHAT!!??

TS: Did you install the drivers?

Cust: (silence)

...click

I was covering for a colleague on our Helpline / Tech Support line who was on holiday for a week. After an arduous week talking to endless customers who buy games only to have us almost play the game for them 5:30pm Friday hadn’t arrived soon enough.

In all of the manuals the Helpline hours of operation were clearly stated 9am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday, so of course we usually ignore the phones if they ring after that time.

Anyway at about 6pm one of the lines lit up and rang for about five minutes before I go annoyed with it and picked it up, the call went thusly:

Me: Hello.

Gamer: Hello.

Me: Hello.

Gamer: Hello.

At this point I decided to pretend I couldn’t hear the caller.

Me: Hello, hello? HELLO! Steve (other support oppo) I think someone’s having us on here, I’m gonna hang up.

Hangs up.

Less than a minute later the phone begins to ring again. Because I was still laughing I told Steve to pick up the phone and if a youngish kid says hello just do the same as I did.

Steve: Hello.

Gamer: Hello.

Steve: Hello, hello? HELLO! (You get the idea)

Hangs Up

The phone rings again, this kid is nothing if not persistent.

Me: Hello.

Gamer: Hello.

Me: Hello.

Gamer: Hello

At this point I couldn’t keep the ruse going any longer I had to answer properly.

Me: What can I do for you?

Gamer: I’m stuck on Cruise For A Corpse.

Me: What’s your code then?

Gamer: What code? I just need help with … (I forget this bit as it isn’t really relevant)

Me: To help you I need to know what the wooden mermaid in the lobby says to you.

Gamer: How do I get that?

Me: Go to the lobby and talk to the wooden mermaid, it will give you a number and a letter, the number and letter will tell me exactly what you need to know. Go away talk to the mermaid and call me back once you have the number.

Gamer: Okay.

A few minutes later the phone started ringing again. We went home for the weekend, it was Friday after all.

Being a consultant in a small town, I get the pleasure of dealing with user of every scale of computer knowledge. For the one's that are really timid about exposing their lack of knowledge, I always relay this story to them.

My first personal computer years ago was the infamous IBM Computer Junior. Though a piss-ant compared to today's system, I still managed to accomplish some major tasks on that system and I was very proud to own it. I had it positioned nicely on a desk with my DOS 2.2 and other manuals displayed proudly above it on a shelf. My wife, very much a computer novice, was looking over my shoulder one day and noticed the DOS manual. Bless her heart, but this was her exact comment: "Hone, I see you have a Dos book, but where do you keep the Don'ts book?"

All you novice users out there should take note, today, my wife can do just about anything with he own PII-300Mhx system.

I got a call one evening that a patron (I work in a university library) had gotten a cd stuck in one of our public access web stations. I thought that was curious because these machines don't have cdrom players. When I got down to the machine, I found that she had inserted the cdrom in a 5 1/4" floppy drive slot. Doesn't make me feel any younger to realize that this 18 year-old had never seen a 5 1/4" floppy drive.

Steve Jones

U Md Baltimore County Library

I work as a Tech Support Rep. for a large manufacturer in the Midwest. Recently I took a call from a user who was having problems with her keyboard. The "T", "G", "B" keys as well as the keyboard were not working. Seeing that these keys were all in a row, I figured it a rather simple fix.

"Ok, it sounds like you may have a foreign object such as a paperclip down in the keyboard."

"That's impossible, I don't use paperclips anywhere near my keyboard".

"Ok, just to make sure, can you turn the keyboard upside down and shake it a little for me to see if you can hear anything moving around inside."

"No, don't hear anything, but ummmmm, does WATER matter?"

I guess she was able to sense my amazement with that reply because the next words I heard were "ok, bye".

Working for a major Software Company late at night, I usually get the more difficult calls from the customers that have spent all day trying to fix the problems. When they do call, they are usually tired and short tempered.

Upon starting my shift one night, I quickly got a call from a gentleman that was having problems with his sounds. Everything was working fine, just no sounds.

I spent the next half an hour going through the settings and advanced options available. Everything seemed to work without generating any errors. In the midst of the conversation, I had asked the gentleman to make sure that the volumes were set at a medium settings in the event that the sound does come on, we wouldn't get overblown by the sounds. He did just that.

After eliminating all possible major conflicts (drivers, settings, etc)I had asked the customer to check his physical connections of all the speakers and such, "make sure they are all plugged in the right spots and they have green for go". While crawling under the desk to check the connections, he commented "You really think that it could be something this stupid?", my only reply was, "You never know what could happen".

Continuating the call, I ran out of options, I asked the customer to hold for a moment. I consulted with another co-worker for any off the wall ideas that he could come up with, to no evail. As I attempted to return to the customer and try to probe into something wild and crazy, he was gone....hung up.

I immediately called the customer back, the conversation followed:

Customer: Hello?

Me: Is this 'John'?

Customer: Yes

Me: This is Brian from Technical Support, I am sorry for the disconnect....Anything new happened?

Customer: (in a quiet tone) I figured the problem out myself

Me: Really, How did you do that?

Customer: (in a even lower tone)I turned the volume up on my speakers. You never know, right?

I work for an ISP doing tech support.

I got this call and the customer was saying that he had a

serious problem and wanted to send our ISP a copy of a

returned message. He also wanted to send a copy to the FBI,

because the message said that it was intercepted. He

thought someone was reading his messages. But really what

was going on is that his mail wasn't going through and was

getting daemon errors. The interception was by the server,

not a person.

Im on a call with this lady, and a pretty young one I might add..... dispelling the notion that all the computer illiterates are older folk :P Anyways, Im in the middle of helping her setup up a manual connection to the internet.

Heres what happend:

Me: ...ok, now I want you to right click on the dialer we just created...

Her: ok

Me: (hearing typing in the background) ..hmm...ok, well then go to server types..

Her: What? where's that?

Me: Its one of the tabs up near the top.

Her: No, I don't see that.

Me: Ok, what DO you see then?

Her: Umm...there's this thing called "make new connection" and another one called "click."

Me: :o

I just heard this from the tech next to me:

"I'm sorry sir, but I haven't heard of a power surge

adding an icon to someone's desktop."

I work as a tech. in a big computer company, and I just got

the following call:

Cu.: The box my computer came in says it comes with 32 bits

of software. I just checked the contents and there are only

4 CD's. When are you going to send me the other 28 CD's

I work for a local ISP in Pensacola, FL. and I recently had a run in with one of my customers, this is how it went.

Me: (*&%T#%$)this is Jason, how can I help you?

Cust: Yes, I am having trouble logging on to your services.

Me: Okay, Can you give me your username so that I can find your records.

Cust: yes, it is ()&*%$J))

Me: Okay, now I need to verify your password can you give it to me?

Cust: No, I can't!

Me: Well, why not?

Cust: It is a secret!

Me: (At this time I am really confused)But Ma'am I need your password to verify it with what I have here.

Cust: I am sorry but our password is a secret and my husband would get very upset with me If I told anyone.

Me: Okay, can you call your husband and get permission from him so that you can tell me what your password is?

Cust: Yes, I call you right back.

I didn't hear back from the customer for about an hour but when I did needless to say she was quite embarrassed about the whole ordeal.

Just another day at work! :)

I had a customer call in once with an internet relate problem

and in the course of our conversation she slipped on in on me.

I was asking her what was her error message, and she said well

we just moved and it is giving me a protocols error.

(Dial-Up networking could not establish a compatible set

of network protocols...) she continued, "I have already replaced

the mouse and that didn't fix the problem..." and kept going.

I was completely caught off guard by the comment and, If I had

thought about it when she said it I would have said,

"Hmmm, replaced your mosue and that didn't fix the problem??

Well that normally works for most of our customers...have you

tried the keyboard."

G

A customer called stating that shed had spent some time

working on creating an invoice and order entry system

with our database product.

She was finally ready to implement the system. She wanted

to know how to share her data.

I thought to myself, how easy. Nothing is as easy as

it seems.

The customer told me that she had the following hardware:

1 CPU (She really meant computer)

2 monitors

2 keyboards

She wanted to share the data with two people? What's wrong

with the above picture?

Her goal was to connect both monitors and keyboards to

the same PC and have both people use the PC and share

the data.

I tried to explain what a PC could and could not do. That

was a waste of breath. I tried to explain a what network is

and how to share data. Another waste of breath.

I finally stated that what she wanted was beyond the

technology of what computers are capable of doing.

That she understood. She asked me (for the 13th time) what

she needed to share the data. So I listed it again.

1) 2 Computers

2) Network Hardware, including a network card.

3) Connecting wire

4) Network software

Her reply, so I need some type of software?

No, you need 2 computers, network software, connecting

wire, and a network card.

I repeated the only thing she understood so far... it is

beyond the technology of computers to do what you want.

My next bright idea:

You will need to buy another computer, network hardware

and software in order to connect the two computers and

share the database's data.

Her reply: I don't know about that. I had to pressure my

boss just to get the two licensed copies of this software. I

don't think I'll be able to get him to authorize the

purchase of anything else. If I can't get him to buy the

computer, How can I return the software?

Although I currently support several hundred Mac users

at a large advertising agency, one of my best tales comes

from years prior when I was running the self-service

computer area at a local Kinko's copies.

As I was sitting in my little cage doing some graphics work

a rather mystified looking woman wandered into our Macintosh

computer area. Although I chuckled briefly thinking to myself

that she looked somewhat like a deer in the headlights, I

quickly forgot about her and went back to my work.

Moments later I heard a smack, followed by a frustrated "Why

won't this f***ing thing work?". When I looked up I what

a saw had me laughing so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes.

My little Bambi had sat down at one of the Macs (not turned on),

picked up the mouse, and holding it at arms length was attempting

to get the machine to function as if she were using a garage

door opener. When my laughter finally passed I went to her (still

giggling somewhat) and explained to her how a mouse worked.

Of course, she insisted that her mouse at home worked just

fine this way. Sure lady, just keep it on the desk huh?

So, she managed to finally get her work done and head home. But,

somewhere out there, in some suburban driveway I can only

imagine this poor woman sliding her garage door opener

all over the dashboard completely mystyfied as to why it just

doesn't work.

I had recently installed a small LAN in a bunch of offices.

One morning I received a call from their IT manager.

ITM: Mike, we have a problem with that network you installed.

Every morning at about 10 o'clock, the network goes down,

and it always comes back about 5 minutes later.

Me: OK, see you tomorrow at 9:45.

ITM: Cheerio.

Next day....

I'm there, moving files from one drive to another on the network.

09:55 and the cleaner comes in. Suddenly, the network drives

are unavailable. I turn round to look at the hub to watch

the pretty green lights flashing... funny, nothing's happening -

no network traffic at all. Come to that, what happened to the

power LED?... (Sound of vacuum cleaner, finding it hard to put

2+2 together) DOH!

Me: Excuse me, could you plug your vacuum in to another socket, please?

Lady: But I always use this one.

Me: OK, but this one is for our hub. Could you use that one

over there?

Lady: Why can't you plug your hub in there, instead?

Me: 'Cos it would take me 2 days to re-wire the *@£'@# network is why.

Lady: No need for that - you only have to ask!

Me: (Silently) AAAARRRRGGGGGHHH!

I was at OfficeMax and I overheard someone saying to the salesman that he was out of Interupts, and that he had been told he could buy an expansion card to add more. The saleman said that it was true, but they didn't carry those cards, maybe he should check Comp-USA.

I don't know who wrote this, but I must say that it's become a staple of our bulliten board.... :)

Enoy, folks! --Marten

If You Only Had A Brain: The Tech Support Song

(Sung to the music of "If I only had a brain" from the Wizard of

Oz)

When yer computer's in the toilet,

and all attempts to fix are foil-ed,

though you try and try a-gaaaaain...

Better call us for service,

'cause w know that you're nervous

and you just don't have a braaaaain!

When your com port is un-know-un,

better get us on the phow-un,

'cause you know it's just germaaaaane:

you don't know from shinola,

you never did what we tol' ya',

and we wish you had a braaaaain!

Yeah, yer' typin's a disaster,

the computer is yer master,

and reading, you disdaaaaain.

The man-u-als, they snow you

and in spite of all we show you,

just your ignorance remaaaaains.

You don't know what the hell yer' doin',

and it's drivin' us to ruin,

my God!, you're such a paaaaain!

You talk when you should listen,

and into the wind you're pissin',

oh, we wish you had a braaaaain!

At tech support, we're here for helpin',

so siddown and quit yer yelpin',

while we're tryin' to explaaaaain.

Please don't futz with your system,

I'm not askin', I'm insistin',

'cause you just don't have a braaaaain!

Well, your mind's like cookie batter,

there's an absence of grey matter,

so this is our refraaaaain:

We could make your system work,

and not a duty would we shirk,

if you only had a braaaaain!

It's our job, we try to help ya'

though at times we'd like to belt ya',

'cause you're drivin' us insaaaaane!

But as long as they keep payin' us,

we'll be here, although it's heinous,

and we wish ... you'd ... get ... a ...

braa-ee-yaaee-yaaee-yaaee-yain!

I used to do tech support for a company outside of Houston, TX.

One of the offices we supported was a few miles away. We had

a user there who had a recurring problem with one specific program.

This was an old 386 machine, and the program ran off a 5 1/4"

floppy disk (remember those?) Well, after recreating this disk

for her several times, we decided to pay her a visit to see if

there was something in the local environment causing the problem.

We show up, and she puts the disk in and runs the program.

Everything goes ok, so we ask where she keeps the disk when it is

not in use. "Oh, right here!" and proceeds to remove the floppy

and stick it to the side of the CPU..... with A MAGNET!!!!

AARRRGGGHHH!!!!!

I was in a book store the other day when the woman in front of me

asked the assistant if they had any books on CD roms.

The assistant was a little perplexed and asked exactly

what about CD roms did she want to know.

The customer replied,

"Well, my computer has a CD rom and I just want to get a book

to learn how to use it."

If only I had known there was a market for that sort of thing.

I could have written heaps of books.

Imagine:

CD rom drives for dummies.

Floppy disk drives for dummies.

On/off switches for dummies.

My first day answering the technical support line.

Woman calls in crying and in a panick. Her monitor screen had turned red, solid red and she heard a ticking noise coming from the monitor.

After about 5 minutes troubleshooting we found that all of her display colors had been set to red. When I had her move the monitor to see if any thing was rubbing or bumping against it she found a piano time keeper clicking away rythmically. Talk about trying to scare you out of a job.

Hi,

I work for a 3rd party technical support company, who in

turn works for many different small ISPs. It was my first

day on the job as a Tech (fresh out of training). I heard

from my friends there that they had gotten some absurd calls

of people not being able to to tell a monitor from a mouse.

I took the stories rather lightly untill I was lucky enough

to get such a person.

It was late in my shift when I got the caller. She immidiately

complained that she was unable to get websites or check her

e-mail. My first lesson from this call was to check for the

"silly" stuff before checking the more "complex" settings. I

then directed the caller to dialup network and verified that

she had DNS#'s, she did. Then went to networking and made sure

she had TCP/IP protocal set correctly, she did. Slowly running

out of options a friend of mine who was monitoring me whispered

to me to 'see if she can connect to the ISP'. I think asked a

question that should be retorical, "Did you hear your modem dial?"

And much to my surprise at the time she said, "You know, I

don't have a modem." I could barely hold back from completely

laughing into this woman's ear, my friend who was monitoring

threw his hands in the air and cried "Why!? Why!?". If that

was not enough she then complained that we didn't "tell" her

that she needed a modem to get connected to the internet,

when common sense would say "yes you do" and the software

package that was sent to her said that "a 14.4 or better modem

is required".

Sometimes, I really do worry about the world.

I work for a large ISP to be referred to, in the interest of my job security, as George.

The help desk is largely evaluated on the basis of low call time. Partly, that's because you really can fix most of the problems were allowed to fix(we don't edit registries, we don't install modems) very quickly; partly, that's because we don't like having people on hold while we spend a long time fixing a problem; and partly, I think management gets some kind of bonus out of it.

The average call time is around eight minutes, but some techs have way lower times. One guy, referred to hereafter as "Quick-draw," consistently averages about four and a half minutes. Pretty impressive, huh? I soon found out how he does it.

So I've just gotten to work and my second or third call is from a guy with DNS errors on every site. I verify that he's actually connected (with our software install, the Netscape shortcut is called "Launch George" so users have a habit of just opening Netscape, thinking they're online). Some of his configuration is a little wonky and I fix it, but this guys still can't get online. He's got two phone lines and keeps testing my fixes as we try them. DNS error, DNS error...

By now I'm eager to ping his IP, so I tell himhow to run winipcfg. When he gets it, it informs him that his Ethernet adapter is the AOL adapter and that his IP address is 0.0.0.0. I question him a little bit more and it turns out he installed AOL software v4.0 the previous day, though he doesn't use the dialer; he TCP/IP's in through us. I guess AOL calls it "bring your own access." OK, so the problem is solved, but I hate yanking other ISP's software unless I have to; if the customer has a problem with the other ISP, they're going to blame George generally and you personally for it, even if it's got nothing to do with thier problem.

So, in a "cover-my-ass" kind of way, I hit the Quick-Dial button for a supervisor, so I can later say that "A supervisor told me so."

When the supervisor desk picks up, I hear "Quick-draw, how can I help you?" I tell him the story. In a flash he tells me to lower this guy's baud rate, remove compression, and give him a modem initalization string of AT&F1.

I blink. "Uh, actually, I know what the guy's problem is; I just wanted to know..."

"DNS errors can be caused by line noise."(Lowereing baud and dumping compression is our workaround for line noise.) I hang up, grit my teeth, and walk the guy through deleting his AOL adapter and the TCP/IP stack bound to it. On restart, he gets online fine.

I spent the rest of the day:

1.Confirming that "Quick-draw" was the same guy appearing on our inhouse web page everyday as a "Top Rep!" with an average call time under five minutes.

2.Finding out that he was answering the supervisors phones during a supervisor's meeting, because he is, after all, a "Top Rep."

3.Discovering that other co-workers hate him too, because he tells his customers upon call-back to ask for the "Top Rep." However, he only seems to do this to customers who don't call back during his shift, and he never gives out his agent #, which would be the only way of contacting him. Thus, customers assume that whoever they are talking to is not a "Top Rep" and are reluctant to follow any advice given them. (Customers never seem to make the leap that if he really was the "Top Rep," they wouldn't BE calling back.

4.Quietly letting a few real supervisors know about my little conversation with "Quick-Draw."

5.Bitching to anybody who would listen that the company was celebrating as "Top Rep" someone who couldn't troubleshoot a problem on the troubleshootingest day of his life, if he had an electrified troubleshooting machine.

We do entry-level ISP stuff, so we do get a lot of users who don't know you need a computer, don't have the phone line correctly plugged in, don't know how to double click, don't know what kind of modem or OS they have, etc. We tell people they can't log on with WebTV, that if they hear a crackle in their phone line then their modem hears the same crackle, that Windows booting into "Safe Mode" isn't actually our problem, and that we don't provide tech support for Linux machines. But I never will forget that the most ignorant person I've spoken to their was answering phones at the supervisors' desk.

The following 3 conversations were collected from EFNet (IRC)

Proving once again, that people (in general) are stupid.

#help 02/16/98 9:40pm

(everyone) what's the difference between Cobra & Cobra_ ?????

(TheTomcat) everyone: an underscore?

(everyone) TheTomcat: are you sure?

(TheTomcat) ev: yes. an underscore.

(everyone) how come an underscore?? who is she in the first place?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#linuxhelp 02/16/98 10:00pm

(][) how do i explore my files?

(threedogs) ][ use ls it works greqat!

(threedogs) I just learned all about it!

(][) how do i use it

(][) where can i d/l it?

(threedogs) you have to type RETURN after, that's what threw me off at first

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#help 02/16/98 10:20pm

*** Join: BomBsd (Screamas@173-118-193.ipt.aol.com)

(BomBsd) How do i make my own server?

--) note: *.ipt.aol.com (-;

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Being the resident techie in my family, it fell to me to assist some family friends in purchasing their new computer. This was a much more daunting task than I had figured it being as they knew nothing whatsover about computers, but were determined to be rich partakers of the technical age.

Anyhow, they had many problems understanding the files on the cpomputer and how to save, access, or do anything else. But one day they found somethign that they thought they knew-- they found a file of cookies.

"Get that off my computer!" The woman told me. "I don't want none of that!"

"None of what?" I asked perplexed. "It's only internet files. . . "

"I know what it is!" She said, "And I dont want none of that porn stuff on MY computer!"

She thought that cookies were porn files. And we couldnt convince her otherwise. . . .

Both of these incidents occured while I was a lab tech in the

Arts Department of the University I attended. They occured

a year apart but really have to be taken together for full

humour. The third is for all of us techs who think we know

what we are doing.

As a lab tech I had 4 labs to monitor and supervise, one of

these was an email lab with old monichrome monitors sitting

on boxes linked to the network on a 286 processor. One day

a student came in and told me that their screen was blank and

that nothing was coming up. I stepped them through all the

basics, even went as far as to check the network from my

system and see that the computer was still connected. Understand

that I was just being lazy and didn't want to have to leave

my chair and walk all the way to his computer. Finally,

unable to determine what was wrong I made the long walk over.

After taking a second to apprise the situation, I turned on

his monitor and walked back to my room without saying a word,

trying to determine how he made it into University.

A year later I was confronted with a situation which I should

have figured out immediately. A student was complaining because

their screen was all orange and fuzzy, and they had a paper due

in some few hours. I hurridly asked what she had done, made sure

she turned it on, put in her disk. She had she assured me.

I checked the network for errors on that particular computer.

Finally getting up I walked to the computer, looked for a second,

turned it on, and not just the monitor, and walked away taking the

rest of the afternoon off.

...

Saddly, I should point out that after 5 years of computer tech

work and hands on experience, I am not fallable. Recently,

while working a peer to peer tcp/ip network connection for a

client I encountered a problem with their Cd-Rom drivers.

I grabbed the latest copy of the driver off the net and installed

them, only to encounter more problems with the windows drivers.

Going back and forth from one computer to the other with their

Win95 disk I did everything that I could think of only to encounter

a brick wall, nasty little message refusing to read the drive.

I called another tech friend of mine and we discussed it all

for a few minutes, running through the logical steps one by one.

I went to the computer again, staring at it confusedly until I

saw the Win95 disk sitting on top of the tower unit. Opening the

Cd-Rom drive I noticed that I had forgotten to put the disk back in.

Foolishly I mentioned that to my tech friend on the phone.

I am submitting this to you only because I know he will if I won't.

I had a customer call me who was using Netscape to receive mail.

Customer: I have to delete some of this junk mail! How do I do that?

Tech: Ok, press Ctrl+A to highlight them all and then hit delete on the keyboard.

Customer: OK, I did that but they didn't delete.

Tech: Hmm. What folder is this in?

Customer: I don't know, I see Local mail, Inbox, some other folders and news.jacksonville.net.

Tech: Which one is highlighted?

Customer: News.jacksonville.net.

Turns out the customer was looking at all the newsgroup messages and thought they were his email, (since Netscape places them next to email) and he wanted to delete them. I'd like to see him try to delete 3,000 messages off our server!

I work for a company that does Tech Support for a major ISP in Canada.

One day I took a call from a gentleman who was having trouble loggin on. I went through all the settings and everything looked fine so I asked for his user name and password. He gave me the user name and a password of "lower case". It seems that this this was not the first time this had happened.

Our clienrts can register online and it comes to a point that the server gives you your user name password and email address. The strange thing that got me is that it says PASSWORD(LOWERCASE) xxxxxxxxx. Oh well all you can do is laugh

I Work for a company that does Tech support for a major ISP in Canada. One day I took a call from a gentleman who was having trouble installing the software provided. I asked him if he a cd or disks and he replied cd. I then asked what happened when he went into my computer and double clicked on the cdrom icon. He advised drive not ready. I then asked him to take the cd out and then put it back in. Still nothing. After sone investigating I asked where he was placing the cd. He said in the slot where it was supposed to go. A little perplexed I asked him how many cdroms he had (thinking he may have a burner) He advised 2. I remembered that he didn't have 2 cdroms in MY Computer. After some more investigating I asked what the cdrom's looked like. He said one had a button that made a tray come out and the other one was just a slot. Trying not to laugh after I realized that the other cdrom was the space between the actual cdrom and the spacer covering the the slot under the cdrom. He would put the cd in far enough so that it would not fall in and he would still be able to pull it out. GEEEZ!!! And these are people who have to get the 10 year old neighbor boy to come over and program the VCR.

I work in tech support for an educational establishment and

last week it happenned: I was on the phone to the support

dept. of our PC supplier regarding a faulty cd-rom drive.

The conversation went something like this:

After the usual "Hello, how can I help you? "

and "What is the serial number?" blurb, the conversation

went like this:

Alleged Tech: OK, What seems to be the problem?

Me: The CD-Rom drive doesn't read CD-ROM's

Alleged Tech: What do you mean?

Me: When I put a cd-rom in the drive, the pc won't read it.

The PC recognises it and the drivers load no problem, but

whenever I try to look at the disk, it says "General Failure

reading drive D:"

(we then go through the usual troubleshooting - are

drivers loaded? Is it the latest version? Are the cables

in securely etc. Then up comes this question to beat all)

Alleged Tech: Have you recently repartitioned the hard

drive?

Me: No, but why is that relevant to accessing CD-ROM's?

Alleged Tech: Well, if you don't have enough disk space free,

the pc won't be able to copy its indexes on the hard drive,

and your cd's won't run.

Me: (to myself) What on earth is she going on about?

Me: (to her) Thank you very much.

(hang up phone)

The only thing I can think of is that she got confused with some

database / multimedia products that let you install indexes or

even the whole database to the hard drive. This made a whole

lot of us here laugh.

I will not mention the name of the supplier, so you all know

who to avoid giving cd-rom questions to, but I will say that

the name rhymes with Hell.

Keep up the good work - your site is a good way to relax in

between calls.

John B

At one point I worked tech support for a local ISP. A user called with a problem with his modem. All right; we worked with him as best we could, finally tracking it to a hardware problem on the modem, or a problem with his telephone line. He replaced the modem and was able to get online.

Problem solved, right? Unfortunately, no such luck. About two days later, two events happened simultaneously. First, we started getting complaints about Usenet abuse getting mailed to "root"; second, we got a call from the user.

User: Cancel my account!!! (a huge number of calls start out this way; the customer automatically assumes it's the ISP's fault.)

Tech: Well, we can certainly do that for you, sir. Are you having problems with the service? We'd like to try to help if we can.

User: Yeah, my mailbox is full! Your service sucks! I got three hundred E-mails today and all of them were mad at me!

Tech: All right, sir... do you know why they were mad at you?

User: Yeah! I was trying to find out about my modem that I called a few days ago about. I want to get it working again and you people wouldn't help me. So I posted a message to the newsgroups.

Tech: You did, sir? Which one?

User: All of them. (in a perfectly indignant tone).

Tech: (long, drawn out pause). Well, yes, sir, that would explain it. Doing that is considered a violation of 'netiquette'.

User: (indignant) I thought I could say anything I wanted to on the Internet!!!

Tech: (patiently) Yes, yes you can, sir. The trouble is, so can everybody else.

I get a call from a "mom & pop" construction company.

The account is frantic. Her HDD crashed and of course

she had no system-wide backup. She did however have her

accounting data backed up on 5 1/4 diskette. I thought,

ok no big deal, new HDD, reload apps, then restore the acctounting data. The accountant was by no means computer literate, so needless to say she was excited. I install

the new hardware, reload her O/S and her apps. I reloaded

her account package and asked for her backup diskette.

She points to a corkboard with a diskette TACKED to it.

Apparently she faithfully backed up her data every other Friday on the same disk and each time she just grabbed

a thumbtack and tacked it to the board. Not through one of the holes mind you. This diskette had count'em 50 seperate

holes in it. Of course the data was gone.

Kinda reminds you of the Any Key type stories.

ps. I asked her ,"Well didn't the system tell you it was a bad disk after the first hole or 2"? Her reply was:

"Oh I never really look at the screen, I just hit the keys and leave for the weekend."

This is an ongoing problem with my mother. She keeps insisting that as a media center secretary, where she has to put things together and take them apart, she is capable of assisting in putting together a computer. Well, she helped me put back together, despite my protests that Ia could do it myself, an Apple 2 plus, (you know the indestructable ones), and when we got finished, I could not read Integer on the computer. She furthermore said, as it was my computer and she did not recommend the computer, that the repairs would come out of my pocket. I had never heard of this problem before or since. Because everyone I talked to agree that, aas most of my programs were in Integer, that the computer was worthless to me, so I ditched it.

Well, I now have to additional motherboards with chips, one being a Pentium 100 and the other being a 486. Mommy's getting the 486. She wanted to know why she wasn't getting the Pentium....Go Figya!

I sometimes do computer work (repairs, building, etc.) on the side. On occasion I get requests to build computers from people who don't really know what they need or what they are asking for. A few days ago, I spoke to a neighborhood teenager. I had some real trouble keeping the conversation flowing smoothly. It went something like this:

Him: I've got the monitor and keyboard, I just need the modem.

Me: I explain to him that he needs a lot more than that, and start detailing the various parts needed and what a modem really does. I tell him the cost of a motherboard and show him one, and point out what plugs in where. When I mention the "chip" (CPU)...

Him: Do you need that?

Me: Yeah, the computer won't work without it.

We go on for a few minutes discussing prices. When we have covered the parts to build a complete Pentium 233 MMX...

Him: So, will that get me up to a 486 ROM?

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to answer that one.

This is one of those tales from the "other side".

Called Phone Company.

Me: Hi, I'm calling to inquire about a static IP address for ISDN service?

Rep: IP?

Me: Yeah, a static IP address.

Rep: uhm, this is BellSouth

Me: I kno-er, oh - I called (phone comanpy), not (phonecompany.net)....my mistake.

Rep: *reassuring chuckle*That's ok, you need to call sales dept.

Called sales Dept.

Rep: Hi, Are you calling to order our start-up software?

Me: Hi, actually I'm calling to inquire about a static IP address for ISDN service?

Rep: Excuse me?

Me: *speaking slowly* a static I P address

Rep: Oh, sorry. You reached the Account Services department. I send out start-up software. You need to call phone comany.

Me: Actually, that's who referred me to you.

Rep: Oh?

Me: yes, although I think on your main menu of options you listed technical support. Maybe I should call back, but choose them.

Rep: I think you should call phone company.

Me: Ok, thank you - bye.

Called back, but chose Technical Support

(waited several minutes to dreadful hold music)

Me: Hi, I'm calling regarding getting a static IP address.

Rep: You need to call sales.

Me: No, they referred me to the phone company.

Rep: Ok, you don't need to speak to those morons then. You need to call

our shared web hosting sales. They deal with web hosting up to 2000M.

Me: uh, no..I don't need to host, I need to telecommute into an existing server.

Rep: yeah, they do static IP addresses too. Or call the ISDN help desk.

Me: ok, thanks.

Called ISDN help desk

(waited a few more minutes on hold)

HD:How can I help you?

Me: I'm calling to see if static IP addresses are possible with your service, and if so, is there an additional charge?

HD: yes, you can. You need to call sales.

Me: No, I don't (proceed to run down the run around)

HD: You say you're moving to the Atlanta area?

Me: yes.

HD: call this number (local Atlanta number), they can help you.

called Atlanta.

Told the woman my question. I got transferred (she didn't even say, "Wait while I transfer you", just *click*) to sales.

*strike six*

Called shared web hosting. Told them I didn't need a business website, just a static IP address for a personal, residential ISDN line that would primarily be used to telecommute to work. They told me to call sales. I said I did that and gave them the run down of my phone calls. He said, "Wow" - call them back and speak to a manager.

Called sales. Spoke with someone else, detailing my need and the phone calls I had already made. He said, "I just send out the software." I said "I understand that, but who is it that actually uses their fingers to enter the userid and other information?" He said, "uhmm... Tech Support, or Billing?"

"BILLING!", I thought - finally, a NEW department. "Ok, let me try billing"

*transfer*

"Hello, Billing"

(explanation, description of communication problems)

"Ok, let me transfer yo-*click*"

"Hello, this is Marcy(?)"

"Oh, hello Marcy. I have a question." At this point, I have no idea what "Marcy" does, so I ask..."Marcy, I don't mean to be rude or indignant, but what is it you do there?"

"Marketing"

"Oh, well, ok" Tell my story once more.

"Ok" she says with some confidence. What???? could I be getting somewhere?

*transferred back to shared web hosting*

I'm wondering if there's ANYONE involved in the process I haven't spoken with. If there is, I'd like to call back, just to say I've covered all the bases - and of course I want to start out six phone numbers away and transfer my way to them.

Working for XYZ company in technical support, we got a

number of calls with questions and statements as follows:

The company apps weren't all that well written IMHO, and

caused memory leaks in Windows 3.1 CONSTANLY.

ME: Thanks for calling Tech support, this is Ron, whats up?

THEM: I'm running "Shoot myself in the foot 2.0" and I keep

getting this error messages, "Unable to process, not enough system resources". It seems to happen after I've been running it awhile.

ME: (I'm thinking memory, ok lets see) Ok sir, how much physical Ram do you have in your system?

THEM: (After a good 30 secs. of silence on his end) Well,

let's see, its a new system, gee, its got a buttload of Ram.

ME: (mute the headset, seize up laughing, return after a good 20 secs of laughing). I'm sorry sir, I'm going to need

something a bit more accurate.

THEM: (before I could lead him through the steps to tell me how much ram he had) Uhh, lemme call the guys I bought it from and I'll call ya back...(click)

Another great one.

Another app by this company had a break point concerning what versions ran pre-Dos 5.0 and post-Dos 5.0. ok Simple enough. Still in Windows 3.1 here:

ME: Thank you for calling tech support, this is Ron, whatsup?

THEM: well I'm having trouble retrieving my APP X files.

ME: ok, has anything changed?

THEM: well my system crashed and I had to have a local PC shop reinstall all my software, including APP X.

ME: ok, what version of DOS are you running?

THEM: I'm not running DOS, just Windows 3.1.

ME: Sir, thats not possible, Windows requires a DOS platform.

THEM: Look Mr. tech man, I'm sitting right here in front of my PC telling you "I DON'T USE DOS, JUST WINDOWS"

ME: Sir, Windows is not an entire O/S by itself, it simply

adds a simple-to-use graphical Interface. When your system boots, it boots DOS, then loads WINDOWS 3.1. It probably loads automatically when you bootup, its actually a common misconception.

THEM: Look I didn't call you to have my intelligence insulted, I just want some help, if you don't know enough

to help me, then please connect me to someone who can.

I transfered this clown to another TECH, 5 mins. later he

goes to another TECH, then to the supervisor.

Each time he got transfered he stuck to his guns and insisted he wasn't running DOS and if we continued to

"duck" his problem, then he would find another software company. I hope their tech support was better than ours...:)

It's not the ignorance of people that really gets to me, its the fact these people call , then DON'T LISTEN?!?!!)!?!

Working in a PC shop that did warranty work for Compaq.

This guy brings in Compaq, reporting a dead system.

The case lid is modular and 1 side was already removed

when he brought it in. I noticed a weird smell and saw

some sort of liquid residue covering a majority of the internal parts. I asked him about it and after about 15 mins. of evasive answers, I finally get the story:

His dog peed into the system while it was up and running.

Apparently he keeps 1 side of the case off for better cooling. (odd, considering compaqs cool better all buttoned up). Anyway, he got wrapped up with something and his dog apparently really had to go. Why he chose this guys PC, I'll never know, but needless to say it was DEAD.

2 small additions:

1) His dog was a Yorkie (amazing how much fluid those little guys can hold)

2) He actually asked if we could repair it under warranty.

Ron Velotta

I work for an ISP in Michigan, and the following actually happened to a co-worker, but I happened to be lucky enough to be listening in on the call.

Tech: "Tech Support, how may I help you?"

Customer: "I want to get on online"

Tech: Well sir, you've called the right place. What can I help you with?"

Customer: "Well, what do I need to do?"

Tech: "First of all, what operating system are you using?"

Customer: "What do you mean?"

Tech: "Well, are you using Windows 95...."

Customer: "No, I don't have a computer."

Tech: "Well sir, you need a computer in order to connect to the internet."

Customer: "But this box says 'For all your internet needs'"

Tech: "What box?"

Customer: "The one that this modem came in."

A few years ago I went to Best Buy in Woodbridge, Virginia and was looking at video cards (I really don't remember the exact specifications). I had heard about one type of card (call it Type A) but they only carried another type (call it Type B). Not knowing the difference, I asked a technician which was better, Type A or Type B. His Answer? "Type A must be better, since we only carry Type B." I never again went to Best Buy for components.

I worked at Lotus Development for a couple of years; in the Data Center Services dept. building Compaq Proliant server racks. These were high-end servers typically running 30+gigs of SCSI storage and as much RAM as we could get. We were ordering systems through a re-seller. To make a long story short; When Big Blue bought Lotus the usual replacement of personnel started to take place. My boss the DCS manager quit. He was replaced by a woman who had been fired from her last job. Somehow the powers that were, liked her. I thought she was suprisingly ignorant concerning the technical side of client-server ops. She soon proved me right: We were in the midst of building some servers, which were behind schedule due to budgetary approvals, equipment back-orders, etc, etc. Well, she was hot to get these servers up and running, and we were short the neccessary amount ot RAM to finish the job. One day out of the blue she calls me and my direct-report into her office and asks me to take my credit card and go over to Lechmere,(a now defunct retailer) and buy the neccessary amount of RAM from them! I tried to explain that Lechmere wouldn't sell the type or amount of RAM we needed for this server. We needed 256meg! And this is when RAM was still pretty expensive. My boss and I looked at each other in stunned disbelief...she couldn't understand why we couldnt' just run across the street to Lechmere's retail computer department and buy the 256meg or RAM for the Compaq Proliant. YIKES!!!

I am a service technician and we sometimes use Pcanywhere to connect remotely to a site when we have to do some maintenance work, one day I had to connect to a site and the modem wasn't connecting, so I had one of the filing clerk help me troubleshoot over the phone.

(Me) Is the modem on?

(Her) What is a modem?

(Me) It is the little black box on the desk near the screen

(Her) Ho! I see it

(Me) Is it on?

(Her) How can I tell?

(Me) Do you see lights on it

(Her) Yeah

(Me) Use the on/off button and turn it off

(Her) OK

(Me) Turn it back on and tell me if the lights are back

(Her) They are back

Having reset the modem I tried to connect. It did not work, so we changed some settings, I asked her again to turn the modem off, and then on. We tried again, same problem! This little game went on for half an hour.

After a while she said:

(Her) Ho!

(Me) What? (In an anxious voice)

(Her) I can't tell you!

(Me) What! what!

(Her) You're gonna think I'm stupid!

(Me) No, no ! tell me!

She would not tell me. She asked me to try again and it worked... A few weeks later I went on site to do some repairs and went to the room where the Pcanywhere machine was set up, looking for what she had done that was so stupid. I sat at the desk and realized that the modem had been moved to the computer that was sitting on the floor. The only thing that was on the desk and that had lights and that she could have been turning on and off for half an hour was… the alarm clock radio!

I'm not a tech support person but have been known to be slightly more computer literate than some of my coworkers & friends.

A former coworker -- one day I notice that she's holding her mouse over her head.

Me: What are you doing?

Her: I need to move my cursor further to the right & my mouse was at the edge of my desk & I couldn't move it further to the right.

Me: A brief explanation of how the ball on the bottom of the mouse needs to be in contact with SOMETHING & how she can reposition it to make it to make the cursor move more to the right.

Same former coworker (some time has passed). She now has a computer at home. One day I get a call at home. Seems she's moved residences & is now trying to hook everything up. Her monitor & computer are working but her printer won't print.

Keep in mind, she's still in the stage of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." I resist beating my head against the wall when it finally transpires that she only has 2 power cords. I point out that she has 3 devices requiring electricity & that she will need to actually, physically get electricity to all 3. Oh.

Another coworker needs photos scanned. I scan them & e-mail them to her. She calls me (at 5 minutes before quitting time) -- the files won't open, she's getting an error message. Several questions later I find out she's trying to open a graphics file directly. I point out that she'll need to import them into a file like a Word document. Oh. Can I tell her how to do that? Sure. During the 10 minute process I discover some of her computer skills aren't all they could be but we get the job done. Sigh.

A couple days later, she needs more photos scanned. I do that & e-mail them to her -- along with step by step instructions on what to do with them. Sure enough I get a call -- again. She's trying to open the graphics file directly -- again. I ask why she hasn't followed my directions in the e-mail. Then realize the futility of that & just walk her through it -- again.

I work in a computer lab in a museum and at times the public can

come in and surf the Internet, or draw a picture, or something like

that.

Story 1:

(It's useful to know that we use At Ease to make sure visitors

don't mess with settings and only have access to certain programs

that show up in a cute, easy little window with big buttons.)

GUY: (Calling me over) Hey, you, can you come over here?

ME: What seems to be the problem today sir?

GUY: Yeah, this stupid computer just turned off for no reason.

ME: Um...okay. What were you doing when it turned off?

GUY: What? I don't know...I was just sort of clicking around.

ME: All right, what program were you using when it turned off.

GUY: What?

ME: Were you on the Internet, or did you click on something else in

the main window with all the buttons?

GUY: Oh, I don't know, I was just click around.

ME: (Knowing that if a person trys to quit the At Ease window, they're

taken to a log in screen that has a list of users and a shut down button)

"Sir, did you click on a big button that said SHUT DOWN and had a

switch on it?"

GUY: Uh huh, so?

ME: Well sir, SHUT DOWN is a button that turns the computer off, let me turn

it back on for you...(I do)

GUY: Man these computers are dumb.

Let's just say I don't think it's the computers that are dumb...I'll

be sure to submit more stories later...

These are some of the calls I got in my first month of tech support.

I had just started working in the first level tech support, for a local ISP. After a week of training they started me on the phone with an experienced tech sitting with me. One call the guy all he needed was to set up his dialer to connect into our server and was real friendly. We were just zipping along and then for some reason he just felt the need to blurt out "I run a MAJOR adult website" The tech sitting next to me burst out laughing. I just responded with "that's nice" and continued setting up his dialer, trying very hard not to laugh into my headset. After he hung up, the two of us spent about five minutes just laughing.

A very common call I get is people who would connect to our server and then wonder why they couldn't go anywhere. All they had on their was little window that said connected to PDQ. Problem? They hadn't opened their web browser.

a user at from a big corporate company rang our helpdesk up and could not understand how to use his computer (not a new starter). we went through all the normal checks to try and imagine what the user was doing wrong, but could not imagine why he could not work on his machine(something about the mouse not working correctly). i decided to go out there and check it out !!

it turns out that the user was actually placing the mouse onto the screen and trying to follow the curser!!!!

this was the joke of the month for us and i mention it to all my collueges i know.., users can be quite silly do we agree on that hey !

ok cheers

from kim

I manage a micro-computer lab at a large midwestern

university.

One day I was sitting at my desk when I was approached by a

woman claming to be 'computer illiterate'. No big woop,

I thought. It was my job to ease the worried brows of the

students and I assured her that none of this computer stuff

was reallythat difficult. I helped her through our sign-in

program and showed her to computer.

'I need to do word processing and then print the paper'

is what she told me when I asked her about the nature of her

visit. No problem. I started up the program for her, made

sure she was saving to her floppy. 'Where is the printer?'

she asked, and I pointed up the box on the table next to my

desk. She said thanks and i retired to my desk.

A couple of hours later I headed out for a quick visit to

restroom and when I returned I saw this woman hovering over

the printer with a rather confused look on her face. Upon

closer inspection of her I noticed that she was attempting to

jam her disk into various parts of the printer, she looked

at me and said, 'I need to print but I cannot find the place

my disk.'

-----------

Something I should have been slapped for.

A woman came into the lab and sat down at a machine. She

then stared at the blank screen for about a minute and,

finally, approached the desk.

her:'How do you open these computers?'

me:'My hands usually do a good job of it but sometimes you

need a screwdriver.'

She looked confused for moment and then left the room without

saying another word.

This Lady calls up about her internet account and said someone is been using her account in the late ho

hours of the morning while she was asleep so we went throught and checked

the numbers where these calls have been comming from and they were all her home number then

she came up with the story that my son was sleep walking and he must have turned on the computer and got on the internet

the funny thing is that she was serious

Overhead from my pod:

Tech Guy: Okay, you have to activate the Novel protocol, and for the path you put OU.Seattle_North.OU= [blah blah]

Worker: Wow, why did they make that so complex?

Tech Guy: [laughs] We didn't, the computer did. If we don't speak it's language, it won't talk to us.

Worker: Jees, that's really stupid. I thought Windows was supposed to be easy. Isn't there a way to just say, "Add the Network printer over by the copier?"

Tech Guy: Yeah, well, after years in the business, you realize it's easy until something goes wrong. Then you have to do it the hard way, and you realize just how dumb computers are.

Manager: We spent a lot of money for those "dumb" computers.

Tech Guy: [assuming it's a joke] Isn't that something?

Manager: I think you should have a better attitude towards our equipment, son. Our company paid a lot of money for the recent upgrades to get the best and smartest computers. Just because you don't know how to run them doesn't give you the right to badmouth corporate equipment! If I was your manager, I would have you fired on the spot. These computers are just as valuable as employees like you and I, and don't deserve this kind of abuse!

It got real quiet after that. I can just imagine what the tech was thinking.

This chap gives me a ring .. I need help on NT 4.00 Server he says ... I can't see the mail server .. can't ping it .. no replies .. nothing .. I asked him if he was infront of the NT box to which he was ...

What do you see on the screen ... nothing at all he says ... the screen is all black .. is the monitor on .. yes he says .. is the PC on ..

Waiting ..

Waiting ..

Waiting ..

It was off ..

caller: there something wrong with the fax machine.

tech: what?

caller: I keep faxing & faxing....but the paper keeps coming out

Tech: "What type of network are you connecting to?"

Cust: "Huh? I don't know. I want to ask you what the heck this little square thing is for."

Tech: "Uhhh... to connect to a LAN."

Cust: "What's that?

Tech: "A Local Area Network... L-A-N."

Cust: "I have a modem installed!"

Me: "Ok... Good. Sooooo... do you have another computer to connect to?"

Cust: "No."

...

Me: "Thanks. Bye."

Cust: "Thank you. You've been very helpful. Oh yeah... I own your company's stock... do well!"

You'd expect he'd know what are products are for...

okay, I've been in tech support for over 15 years under a

variety of platforms and I've had/heard some beauts but this

STILL takes the cake. This is a long one, so grab some popcorn

& settle down. I used to work for a company that supported store management

software. Since we had stores that were 24/7, we had emergency

Beeper support 24/7.

Well, place yourself in my shoes on a warm spring Sunday in

may....

(having been paged and called in and gotten the message,

I call back the user from home)

Me: Hi, this is (company). You had an emergency?

Mgr. Yeah, I can't send anything through the modem.

(the software had to authorize sales via a national

clearinghouse and did so over the modem. No authorization,

no sale. this was serious.)

I settled down to walk him through the clean up procedures.

after about 20 minutes, we got the system completely straightened

out and cleaned up. I also cheered up the user and got him

calmed down.

Me: okay. now, sometimes if you stack sales, that is send more

than one at a time, the clearinghouse can't read them if they're

busy. So, I want you to send ONE sale. One sale, only.

MGR.: got it. (assorted hard drive noises as it brought up the data

the blessed tones of a modem touch-tone dialling.) Well, you did

something, it wasn't even doing THAT before. but - Darn it, It's talking

to me again!

Now, the trouble with doing tech support from home is that you do NOT

have a nice headset with handy features like a "mute" button.

me: HUNH? I mean, excuse me? (having visions of having to

rebuild his entire vendor file) um, can you hold the phone

down by the modem so I can clearly hear what it's saying?

Mgr.: Sure. (rustle, rustle)

NYNEX OPERATOR: -re sorry, all circuits are busy, please try your

call again later. (tone whistle) we're sorry, all circuits .."

Well, I started giggling. Remember, I didn't have a mute button

so the user heard me.

Mgr.: What? What? It can't be that bad, you're laughing. what is

it.

I got my laughter under control.

Me: Sir, I don't think you're going to be able to send any sales

through (glance at the clock - it was about 11:30 am) for another

hour or so. you might want to put up a sign explaining that you're

having phone trouble and you're taking cash sales only at the moment.

MGR.: but what is it? what's wrong with the system?

Me: There is nothing wrong with your system, sir. The problem

is with Nynex. They don't have a line free for you to use.

MGR.: hunh? but, why?

Me: sir, what's today?

MGR.:Sunday.

Me:(patiently) No sir, what's today?

MGR.:(as HE finally gets it.) Moth-ers-day.

Me:uh, hunh. And what does everyone do on mother's day?

MGR.: Call their mother. but, but I'm not calling Long

Distance - I'm calling an 800 number!

Me:(longing for that mute button) yes, but sir, it's a

different area code. which means Nynex has to switch your

call to the long distance carrier even though it isn't

really a long distance call.

MGR.: oh.

I got him straightened out and hung up.

(flash forward to Christmas - no, this tale isn't over yet!

again I get paged, it's the same store, same time of day and

I start grinning as I start dialling)

Me: - Hi! This is (company) calling.

asst. mgr.: (company)? thank god! thank you for calling so

quickly on christmas. I'm sorry to take you away from

your family, but Nothing's going through. I've cleaned

up the system, I've reset the system, I've even tried one

sale at a time. NOTHING!

Me:(time to preserve my rep as a miracle worker) Let me

guess - the modem's talking to you?

asst. mgr.: YEAH!

Me: and it's saying "we're sorry all circuits are busy?"

Asst mgr.:YEAH! what are you, psychic?

Me:(chuckling) Nope, Just been in tech support for a while.

sit back and relax. It's Nynex.

Asst. Mgr.: I thought so but I wanted to make sure. It's

'cause it's Christmas right? and all the phones are tied up

like when you want to get rock concert tickets, right?

Me: Right. Your store had this problem in may, on mother's

day. that's how I knew.

Asst. Mgr.:(losing it) WHAT? He knew about this and didn't

warn me? I'm gonna kill him.

Me: excuse me?

Asst. Mgr.: hunh? oh thanks, for your help, bye!

(then as the phone heads for the receiver I hear her obviously

talking to another employee) I'm gonna kill him. do you

know this happened before...(click)

I went back down to my family, still giggling. It was a

very MERRY christmas.

I am a software support specialist for a small software company. I answered the phone and the customer tells me his name and number, as soon as I acknowleded him, he says, "We have this Megahertz card here, where is the driver disk." I politely informed him that I did not do the installation and do not know the where abouts of his disk. He then asked me again if I knew where the disk was. I then told him that the box it came in would be a good place to start. He then went quiet and said thanks.

I ordered a mail-order notebook for my boss. Since it didn't arrive "fast enough"--he was leaving on Friday(!)--he went to the local chain store and bought a USED DEMO computer to save a whole $100 off the price of a new one.

After struggling for 10 hours (and I make more than $10 an hour) with a corrupt registry, missing system files, etc. I drove a hour each way to return the laptop to the store. Spent several more hours looking vainly for an acceptable one--did I mention that it had to be super-cheap and have a particular type of touchpad?

Called to get boss' opinion; he said "never mind, don't waste any more time on it." Several hours later, "go get me a notebook." Went to another, closer chain store and called boss with 2 options fitting his specs--a $2000 notebook or a $3000. He said go with the $3000. I was up all night getting that thing ready; I ran into all kinds of Win 98 problems and problems with boss' favorite apps. Next morning, tired but with a working notebook, I went in.

Around noon, boss came in, said he had decided notebook was too expensive, wanted me to return it. He also wanted me to find a mail-order house that would have a cheap computer that matched his exact specifications (down to the touchpad) IN STOCK to be delivered TOMORROW and be set up and ready to go by tomorrow afternoon.

It didn't happen.

I setup the Internet and answer the occassional help call for a

local ISP. And I try to help friends. Recently I sent an email

suggesting they might download the MS tools Tweak and RegCean

with the caveat that I would send directions how to set up and

use them.

A couple of weeks later I email Snap, ask if she needed help setting

up Tweak or RegClean. She replied:

Stu helped me fix them, but I need help. (Uh,oh)

1- Where can I download Java..what's the URL? I need it get it to hear

the musical cards my friends send. (I'm afraid to read further)

2- I like the way Tweak cleans my files. Thanks for the tip.

I fire off a email. Files? What files does Tweak Clean I ask?

She responds: You know, the H-Kye files. Everytime I run it, it cleans

my files good. (HUH???? I didn't know that she knew how to find, much

less access the registry files.) Hey, do you know why I'm getting all

of these error messages?

I want call her and scream "DUMMY!!!" but instead I say a silent prayer to the

computer gods and don't reply. Maybe Stu will tell her.

............................

Another friend set a message complaining she that while she was playing cards

on line; her emamil screen had moved--she couldn't see the

buttons on the left side. Could I help?

Click and drag I replied.

............................

I'm in a national office supply store looking for a new monitor. The electonics

geek opines that he has a great new 17" in the back for $200.

"Do you have one on display? He takes me to it. The screen is dark; I open Windows

Solitaire--it is dark too. Geek goes in back to check the stock.

"Sorry! What you see is it," He says brightly.

"What's wrong with the color. It won't adjust."

"Oh it's probably the CRT. It's been on display a year."

DUH!!!!!

..............................

Every day I thank the computer gods for 'real' Tech support,

and that I am not 'it!'

I work as a lab consultant in a busy computer lab at a major

university. I see some very confused and clueless people on

a daily basis. In one instance, I was creating a list of

lab consultants with their email addresses and number of

allotted hours when I saw a man walk into the lab without

signing in on our validation computer first. I walked over

and asked him to sign in up front. On my way back to my desk

I stopped and answered another user's question. When I got

back to my desk I saw a name on the consultants list I

didn't recognize. The man had ignored the signin computer,

walked into my private desk area, shuffled through my

papers, and "signed in" on the list I was working on. He

wrote his name in the consultant column, username in the

email column, and machine number in the hours allotted

column. It really is hard not laughing out loud sometimes.

I was working at the help desk in a university computer lab

which has some older PCs and Macintoshes. A woman came up to

the desk and the following conversation ensued:

Woman: Do you have Windows95 over there?

(pointing towards our PCs)

ME: No, Windows 3.11.

Woman: What about those IBMs? (pointing towards our Macs)

ME: Those aren't IBMs, those are Macs.

Woman: Well, what version of Windows do they have?

ME: They don't have Windows, they use MacOS 7.5.5.

Woman: Is that newer than Windows?

ME: No, just different.

I swear to you that this actually happened and that it is

not exagerated in any way. I am continually astounded, not

only by what people don't know, but by what they assume they

know.

So a fellow calls me and he says, says he:

"So I'm on disability and no one will hire me and I wanna

my own shop for Windows programming and how do I do it?"

This being on the install line, which is the lowest level

of support we offer.

A user called me one afternoon - her computer would not start.

The machine would not boot. I asked her what had happened.

"Nothing", she said, "I was just organizing my files when

I rebooted, this happened" - big black screen.

I grab a DOS disk and took a look around. All of her system

files were gone, but she knew nothing about this.

I move her data and reload Windows. Upon looking at the root

of C:\ she asked what all "those files are". I told her that

they were system files. She told me thatshe moved all those

files into a folder to clean up.

Doh!

As my colleague and I sat at our desk's sipping beer and fieldig 2001 stupid calls I got what I believe to be an all time classic. This mentaly challenged sexual intelectual called and asked me if I could put him on the internet?????????? Hmmmm say's I sure.. He then proceded to tell me he had just bought a Sega Saturn and a phone!!!!!!! After explaining for 10 minutes that he needed a modem and a computer, he says no I just bought a Sega and a phone!! And after spitting my beer all over my computer I explained in the most direct and secondary school terms way that it will never work!!! Then he said "but why"?? So I went into net work protacals and tcp/ip in detail which inturn melted the remaining section of his brain core. After intence grade school explanations he offered to sell us his system, but alas we refused his patronage and with a heavy sigh we were told to F.O. as he hung up on us.. Ah Pipemedia OnLine tech support how we love it so...

I worked for an ISP, this customer called everyday for over a week with

one probelm or another, in the end as he lived near by i told him to bring in his pc and I would fix it for him

as it would be easier than talking to the fuckwit.

so he did bring his pc in, it turned out he was disabled so he asked if i could bring his pc from the car for him which i obliged, when i got the car he said he was not sure what to bring, i told him on the phone to just bring the cpu ie the main unit as we have monitors and

keyboards etc "obviously"

he open the car to show what he had brought:

his pc:

his monitor:

his keyboard

his mouse

his modem

his fax machine

his chair

his desk

his mouse

his mouse mat

his pen holder

amd last but not least his homephone as it connects

to his modem!

Not so much tech support as someones bewildering habit.

I know this guy who, although is pretty computer literate,

seems to regard any and every problem his PC has as terminal.

Take one incident when he tried to update his sound card drivers.

After succesfully installing them the soundcard no longer

worked. But rather than reinstall the old drivers he

reformatted his hard disk and reinstalled the software!

Talk about overkill, and its his solution to everything:

Computer running a bit slow? Reformat.

A Program crashing regularly? Reformat.

Fancy a HD cleanup? Yep, you guessed!

A friend of mine used to work in a shop in Denmark, dealing computers. One day, this techie guy comes in and buys the latest of the latest equipment (486-dx2 66 I think). Obviously, him being a technie, he had to figure out how it worked so he disassembled it and reassembled it again.

The following day, he came in and complained about this computer, which no longer worked, obviously not mentioning that he had "worked" on it. The problem was that the computer never booted, it never reached the dos prompt, it was just beeping occasionally, that was all. It turns out that this guy, while reassembling the computer, had confused the wires for the "turbo" and the "reset" buttons, so the computer wasn't actually frozen, it was just repeatedly rebooting.

Another guy came in one day and bought a sound card (Sound Blaster Pro). He later called back, failing to install it:

tech: So what is the problem.

caller: Well it just doesn't install.

tech: have you inserted the card properly?

caller: how do I do that?

(15 minutes on phone, explaining how to install an ISA card)

caller: what now then?

tech: now you install the software

caller: where do I find the software?

tech: it's in the box, on the floppies supplied with the card.

caller: ummm... ok, there's 6 disks in here. 2 3.5" and 4 5.25". Which ones should I use?

tech: that doesn't matter. They contain the same software.

caller: so can I use the 5.25" floppies then?

tech: yeah, sure, just go ahead. Insert disk one into the floppy drive and run "install"

caller: but I don't have a 5.25" drive...

This one came from when me and some friends of mine worked

for a P.C. mailorder company in their tech support

department. This is true, and one of the most bizarre ones

I have ever seen...

One man had called our tech support trying to get his

cat out from inside his printer. The man had bought a Star

laser printer and those load from the top. The cat had been

walking on top of the printer and managed to get his tail

caught in the paper feed and fed into the printer.

The cat was furious, grolwing because the printer was

still trying to feed the paper and it's tail through. The

owner was histerical, worried about his cat. The tech was

trying to figure out how to calm both of them.

The tech had the man unplug the printer to stop the

motors, which made the cat more relxed but still letting

out small growls here and there. After about 35 minutes of

working and trying to get the printer apart to free the cat,

the tech made a conference call with Star's tech support to

see if they had any way of helping the man.

After another 30 minutes, Star's techs still couldn't

help get the cat out. Then they all hear him mumble

something about the power. Seconds later, the cat screams

as the printer's power-up test routine once again pulled

the cat into it's gears.

The tech told the man to unplug the printer once more

immediately. The man does and comes back to the phone. He

relays, "I think he's hurt. I smell fur burning." Basically

saying that the cat had been fed far enough into the printer

to reach the fuser. And eventually, after 2 companies, three

techs, one veteranarian, and some local anasthesia... They

finally got the cat out.

Here's the kicker:

About a year after the event occured, Star had a full

page ad for it's printers depicting a cat on top of it, and

a full color copy being fed into the tray. Coincidence? I

think not. The tech had it scanned and used for his

wallpaper. I walked by and thought the man he had talked to

had sent him a photo!

while i don't give 'Tech Support' via a phone, I work for a large retail warehouse club (You guess the name) and I get alot of 'kuntry bumkins' in there who can hardly talk, let alone use a computer ... I have quite a few tales i could tell you, but I will keep it down to a minimum:

1 - The Black Boxy Thing!

It's about time for me to leave, and a large man walks up to me with 'the look' in his eye (The look saying 'I got'm question to be askin u`z') So i politly stop, wait for him to walk up to me and I say

Me: "Can I help you with something?"

FatMan: "Are you the local computer guy?"

Me: "Uhh, yeah ... what can I help you with (2nd time I said this)

FatMan: "Yeah, I have a Question"

Me: Ok, what can I (wanted to say that) ... Yes, your question?

FatMan: I just bought a big computer, and it's got this thing on it, what does it do?

Me: Thing? What is it called?

FatMan: (suddenly irrate) I don't know!! It's a little blck boxy thing! (wild arm gesture twards the computers) What does it do?!?!

Me: Does this box hae any writing on it?

FatMan: No no no!! It's a little black boxy thing!!!! It looks like an electric shaver!!! WHAT DOES IT DO!!!???

I pause as a mental image of this man desprately trying to control his computer with his electric razor comes into mind. Then a second image, the same man, in his bathroom, rubbing his mouse on his face

Me: I am sorry sir, I have no idea

FatMan: (no responce, rarely get a thank you anyway as he walks away)

Do these people feed and cloth themselves without tech support too? (Do I put both legs in the right hole thing on my pants? They are stuck, come fix it!!!)

*** sigh ***

I work at an provider who does technical support for several different service providers in the south. Needless to say, some of these people don't quite grasp certain concepts, and they prove it to us every day.

Me: Thank you for calling Internet Technical Support, may I have your username?

I get his username and certain other information, then ask a fairly normal question that almost anyone could answer...

Me: Are you using Windows 95?

Customer: I... I don't know. I just want to get my email. I have this blue disk. (By the word blue, I knew that it was the software that we give out to install Netscape and some other programs)

Me: No, sir. Windows 95 is an operating system. Do you have Windows 95, 3.1, or a Macintosh?

Customer: I don't know what you're talking about. I have this disk...

Me: (quite exasperated by now) No, sir, the operating system that your computer uses. Is it Windows 95, 3.1, or Macintosh?

Customer: I have this blue disk. I have this other one that says Windows 1998...

ARGH! And what's worse, this guy was actually helping his neighbor out, who knew less than he did!!

A couple of years ago I received a phone call from a guy who had upgraded the hard drive in his system and was sending the old drive to a relative. He was filling out the Purolator form and needed to know what the weight of the drive was. I had the information nearby so I looked it up and gave him the weight. About 5 minutes passed and he called back. He thanked me again for looking up the weight of the drive however he said that he had overlooked the fact that he had been using the drive for over a year and was shipping it fully loaded with 50 Mb of files. Did I have any idea how much all the extra information on the drive would affect the weight of the drive. I managed not to laugh out loud and explained the weight remained constant even though I was tempted to add a couple of pounds to it just as a stupidity tax.

I work for a ..respected computer manufacturer. A co-worker of mine had a customer call for tech assistance with some software. He told the customer that he need to press Control-A to perform a certain function. The customer responded that it wasn't working.

This went on for about 25 minutes, The tech restating that he needed to press and hold the Control-A.

He then realized the problem. The caller was Canadian.

And he WAS holding Control, eh.

I've just started working for a large ISP in technical support. One night, while my class was listening to live calls, a lady called with connection problems. The tech walked her through different steps flawlesly, and for the most part, she followed instructions well...too well as you will se. The tech asked the lady to click on "My Computer", to which the lady replied..."Click on your computer?"

I do tech support for Windows 98, but this story comes from

my ISP.

While calling them for help last year(it was just a GPF),

the tech and I started talking about the people who know

nothing about computers.

After telling me about the cd-rom/coffe cup holder(I had never

heard about it till then), he told about a customer who

called asking when he was going to get his credit card back

the tech asked what he meant, the customer said that when it

asked for his credit card number, he proceded to insert it

into the slot on the front of his computer(3.5 floppy drive)

and thought that it sent his credit card to them over the

phone line...

I work for an extremely large PC/outsourcing company positioned in a corporate/educational environment. Because of the nature of the business we see huge numbers of staff passing through... which may account for the *ahem* inability of some. Upon receiving a page from a user that her password "no longer worked" I swifly reset it to MONDAY - having long ago learnt the risk involved with setting passwords to such difficult-to-spell things as LEMMING. I explian to her that once she is logged in, it will prompt her to change the password and I step her through this process over the telephone. All is well until the next day when I receive another job request from the same user... claiming that her password stopped working again. When I enquired, she had assumed that today her password would be TUESDAY :) Sounds logical to me...

I had a customer that said she had these minus signs in

front of her numbers and wanted to get rid of them. I asked

if the numbers where negative. She said yes. I said, how

about multiplying by negative 1? End of phone call.

This is not a call I experienced, but had related to me.

This was back in the days of CP/M. There was customer that

continally got got bad disk errors. Numerous disks were sent

to the customer, and in fact someone even drove to customers

sight (which was highly unusual) and gave the customer disks

that were known to be OK.

CP/M had an interesting feature where if you changed disks

the disk became read-only until you rebooted. Everyone in

support was pretty sure this was the cause.

Finally, one determined representative decided to solve the

problem microscopically. The rep told the customer to insert

the disk and then close the door. The customer asked how

closing would solve the problem. The rep said, "just do it."

The customer agreed "OK, I'll close the door." The next

thing the rep heard was step, step, step, slam!

The rep then instructed the customer to close "the disk

drive door". This solved the problem.

I used to work for Ashton-Tate, the makers of dBASE among

other things. The company had George Tate, but there was

no there by the name of Ashton. It was a made up name.

Because people used to call and ask to speak to Ashton,

the company bought a McCaw and named it Ashton. The bird

became the company mascot.

It turns out that we decided this bird could tell the future

in at least one case. The bird most screatched. However,

the screatch could be interpretted as "Bad Ap". Well,

we had a product (named Framework) which had an "Apps" disks.

In some version of Framework we had a run of bad Apps disks,

so we decided this is what Ashton was trying to tell us all

the time.

Customer

- What's the telephone number for the head of your department?

Tech

- 722-23-23 (for example)

Customer

- Do I dial this with a dash?

???

Four and one half years ago I received a 33 mhz, 425Mb IBM compatible computer. I have since upgraded it myself and many computer stories later, I found techtales.com . The story that stands out in my mind the most is the first time I ever had to call tech. support. I was new to Windows 3.1 and just new to computers in general. While perusing program manager, I discovered the control panel icon. Much to my surprise, I also discovered that I had the power to adjust and configure my system myself. I started with the color icon and realized that I didn't have to put up with the ugly windows defalt colors. I began randomly clicking around until I had what I thought was the perfect color scene. I left control panel and began clicking around on other icons to explore. I found myself in file manager. I vagely remember being there before, but this time it seemed different. The screen looked so much emptier and it looked as though something was missing. All that I could see were a lot of yellow files lined up on one side and a few on the other. What where their names? I had absolutely no writing in sight. I callled the store where I purchased my system and described the problem to one of the techs. We were on the phone for almost an hour trying to determine why I had no file names or writing anywhere on my system. They had no clue as to why it would just up and disappear. Finally they asked me what I had done previously before my call. I explained to them that I changed a few colors on my desktop when suddenly it occurred to me that I had indeed changed the font color to white. How releived I was. I was such a novice that I didn't even realize the need to pay closer attention to any adjustments made yet alone to back up my system's configuration, especially win.ini and system.ini. What a trooper the tech was to have patiently stay on the phone with me for so long and loose probably 60 dollars. This is my first nightmare story. Beleive me, they have gotten worse throughout time. Jennifer D. Curry

A woman calls me and tells me "my modem isn't working."

"Ok," I say "I'll try to help you out then..."

After going through the standard troubleshooting bit

for a while I finaly determine that she has the phone

lines reversed in the back of the modem, the one from

the wall was going to the "phone" jack on the modem the

one to her phone was going to the "line" jack.

"Ok, ma'am, you just need to switch the cables around,

then everything should be fine."

"Ok, let me get this straight, I need to put this one

he(click)....(silence)"

At least she got it.

Ok, here's a recent one, but first I want to rant:

Why are some people PROUD of being computer illiterate?

I don't understand how anyone can NOT want to learn

something. I don't make it a habit of making fun of

someone because they don't know as much as I do -- I

understand that some people haven't had the same

opportunities that I have, but COME ON! When someone says

things like "I don't know much about computers, I don't

want to learn, I WILL NOT learn" I tend to equate them

with pond slime. Perhaps this is being generous.

At any rate, on with the fun!

Had a customer call and tell me that he accidentaly cut the

cables coming out of the power supply. He said that he

had spliced them all back together, but the computer still

wasn't working, but he's sure he got everything hooked back

up. It's obviously NOT the power supply, because he can

hear the drives spin up and the power light comes on.

Ok, this guy doesn't sound too bad, right? He knows

SOMETHING, which is a start. I tell him, ok, we can

either schedule a service call or you can drop the PC

off here. The drop off being cheaper, this is what he

opts for.

(Time passes)

The customer brings the PC in at the very end of the day.

After I write up a ticket and explain to him that "No, I

can't work on it right now, I'm going home" he leaves,

he has no problem with that.

I'm the curious type.

I open up the case anyway, sure enough, he's spliced the

PS wires back together, even getting all the colors to

match up. My gaze passes to the front of the case.

Lo! He HAS hooked everything up! He's got an IDE cable

running from the CD-ROM to his (floppy controlled) tape

drive, jammed halfway in, and from the tape drive to

the HD. For those that are not in the know, an IDE

cable has three connectors, one goes to the controller --

be it on a card or on the motherboard, the other two

connectors go to at the most two IDE devices. Yes, you read

that correctly, he tried to chain three devices together,

one being a floppy device, with nothing connected to the

controller.

The fun doesn't stop here!

I call the customer the next day and ask him "other than

accidentaly cutting the power cables, did you change

anything else in the machine?"

"No," he states.

"Are you sure about that?" I query.

"Yes, it was working before," he says.

"Sir, the way the devices in this machine are hooked

up, there is no way it could possibly have been working."

"Well, I did try to hook up a new tape drive, that's how

I cut the cables -- when I closed the case the power

cables got caught and the case sliced them clean in

two."

"Didn't you notice some resistance?"

"Yes, of course I did, I pushed harder."

All I can say is: at least he tried.

I recently had a customer who made me wonder how his family changed the laws of physics.

Me: Thank you for calling [BIG ISP NAME AND OPENING SCRIPT WITHHELD].....

and how may I help you?

Him: I send my son email to Japan, and it takes 10 to 30 minutes for him to usually respond, I was wondering,

how long does it take to send email to the Phillipines?

(Well at THAT point, somehow refraining from cracking up, or saying, "May I place you on hold to research the speed of Light", I educated him how email works.

To to avail it seemed--He THEN asked me why his son didn't know when he SENT it and why he didn't IMMEDIATELY respond."

I explained how email is sent and received BARELY able to not say,

"and when the email Postal workers go on strike...."

Hey, he would have BELIEVED it.)

Somehow he got it, but still, sometimes...I wonder if his email could find the event horizion, then only get stuck on the virtuall curb untill better ewages are met...:)

Josh

This was a call I recieved on my first day:

Me: Hi, *deleted*, can I help you?

Caller: Hi, how can I find out if my keyboard and speakers are year 2000 complaint.

Me: Er... there's not clock or time keeping device in either of those products Sir, they'll be just fine.

Caller: Oh... what about my monitor?

Me: It'll be fine too, don't worry

Caller: Gee, thanks.

Me: No problem, have a good day.

Why?

That's all I have to ask.

About a month ago we sold a PC to a family who were just starting out in computing.

They picked up their PC one afternoon and later that night I was confronted by a VERY angry customer who decided to reach me via my mobile phone. Needless to say I was quite shocked and had to pull over the side of the road.

It appears that the specifications sheet we supply with the system upon build and configuration, we stipulated that the system contained a 4MB video adaptor.

Cust: "I'll have you in court for false advertising. You said this system had a video adaptor!"

Me: "Uhh well, yes it does have a video adaptor, its the item of hardware that allows you to plug the monitor in."

Cust: "Utter (expletives removed)! I am still trying to find where we put the (more expletives removed) video tape!"

Cust: "And is this thing VHS or BETA?"

The situtation was resolved after another 5 minutes. The customer calmed down and all was fine. They have been content with their PC since.

Someone in Customer Service called our IS department one day saying that all their files were empty and all their work was gone. They would open up their word documents and nothing, they were blank. Every file. Yet the file sizes looked ok, not small enough to be empty. Well, the editing background in word is white and this particualy user changed their font color to white. Changed their font color to black and we were the heros, got all their files back. Maybe people need a little more common sense.

I work for a major ISP, I got a call one day from a lady who could not seem to understand

how to disconnect her computer from the internet. I asked her how she would turn the system

on and she replied she just plugged the power cord in?? I then asked her how she would exit the

system. she said she just pulled the cord from the wall? I asked her why she didn't use the power

switch? To which she replied what's a power switch. :-)

I have been in tech support for almost 2 years and still had not had that call that one cannot believe. Till this one.

Me: Hi this is Matt with (company). How may I help you?

Cus: Hi I have your program and I'm getting this error.

(I think how simple, all he had to do is use a utility that comes with our program)

Me: Ok sir, you will have to rebuild. Click on start then programs

Cus: How about run?

Me: What sir?

Cus: I get to the program by using run.

Me: Sir, do you have a (program group in start menu)?

Cus: I don't have a start menu, this is a special version of windows 95.

Me: Special version?

Cus: Yeah, I'm at work and we have this special version of windows 95. I click on start and run to get to the program.

Me: Uh, sir do you have a large window with some smaller windows inside of it.

Cus: Yeah! That version.

Me: Sir you have windows 3.11. You will need a diffrent version of our program.

Cus: I don't have windows 95?

Me: No sir, I don't know who told you that, but you seem to have windows 3.11.

Cus: Oh, can I get the correct version?

Me: Of course we'll ship it right away.

This one didn't happen to me personally, but it's from

my current boss:

My boss used to do on-site service for a mini-computer

company, his region covered pretty much the entire

eastern seaboard and the midwest. He kept getting

calls about a certain terminal locking up, so he'd

pack up a spare and ship it off, only to get a call

later -- they were still having the same problem.

Normaly, unless the actual computer is down he didn't

bother with a call, but in this case he happened to

be in Florida anyway, so he stopped by for a look.

He sat down at the terminal, typed for a while, nothing

happened. After a frustrating half hour at this he

decided to let the woman who normaly uses the terminal

take over for a while so he could just stand back and

watch -- sure enough, after five minutes or so of her

working the terminal locked up. This woman was "well

endowed." Turns out that she scooted up so close to type

that her breasts rested on the spacebar, aparently

causing the buffer to overflow and lock up the terminal.

My boss said, "hmm, I think I know what the problem is"

and promptly told her supervisor -- he wasn't about to

try and explain to the problem to the poor woman.

Me:Thank you for calling (blah) technical support, how can I help you today.

Cust:(yelling)I just got this blasted laptop and the cd-rom drive is completely useless. It won't read any of my cd's.

Me:Okay sir, please open the drive and ...

Cust:I've already tried all of my cd's, more than 20, and none of them will read, this is a brand new machine. I want a new one.

Me:Okay sir, but I need to make sure ...

Cust:You don't need to do anything except send me a new laptop.

Me:Well sir, this may not be a problem with the cd-rom drive...

Cust:YES IT IS!!!! DON'T YOU LISTEN?!?!

Me:(Getting upset) I do listen, but I will NOT send you a new machine until I am SURE it is warranted. Please humor me and open the cd-rom tray.

Cust:!@#(*$)@(#*$ Okay, but I want your supervisor's name after this so I can complain about the lousy ineffecient service you are giving me ... you are wasting my time. I have been working with computers since you were a junior high kid.

Me:Is the cd tray open?

Cust:Yes

Me:Do you see a red plastic piece inside ... on the tray itself.

Cust:Yes

Me:Good, there are instructions written in 4 languages (Japanese,English,German, and French)in big white letters on the red plastic piece ... PICK ONE AND READ IT!

Cust:Remove this cover before use ...... (sheepishly) Oh.

Me:Do you still want my supervisor's name?

Cust:Ummm ... No, that's okay (Click)

A tech visited a site about an unrelated problem when he noticed the user holding a CD with her finger while she pushed the drive in.

It seems that when a hardware tech replaced the CD drive, he put it upside down and every time she ejected the CD the damn thing fell out.

I work in Tech Support for a large South African ISP, and I just had to share this one....

The customer had called in as she couldn't establish a dial-up connection to us. After various checks, I had narrowed the fault down to the internal modem (a brand known for rapidly burning out); the rest of the conversation went something like this....

Customer: Well, the modem worked perfectly before I left on holiday five months ago.

Me: You've been out of the country for five months ?

Customer: (irritably) Yes, so ?

Me: (holding my breath) Tell me - when you arrived back home, was the pc switched on or off ?

Customer: Of course it was on - I'm using Windows 95, you dummy, you're not supposed to just turn it off, you know!

Me: Quite right, ma'am - but has anyone ever explained to you how you CAN perform a safe shutdown and power off the system ?

Customer: Uh....well....oh......"Start, shutdown, shutdown, ok" ?

Me: ...Yes, ma'am...

(click)

I teach PC troubleshooting seminars. As part of the hands-on training, I teach them how to take the machine totally apart and put it back together. Another part of the hands-on work is sabotaging their machines (unplugging/reversing ribbon cables, loosening expansion cards, etc) and letting them fix their broke machines.

As any tech would know to expedite reassembly, it's important to diagram the orientation of the gray ribbon cables as well as the small rat's nest of wires which connect the various LEDs on the front of the case, keylock and reset switch, etc to the pins on the motherboard. Virtually all power supplies I see have two kinds of four-pin connectors to attach to CD-ROMs, the hard and floppy drives. Those connectors are keyed so they can only go on one way. Some power supply companies try to be extra helpful by including an additional two-wire (5 volt and ground) mini-connector, similar to a "rat's nest" pair of wires. Normally, there are only two places this extra two wires go -- to a CPU fan, or the idiot LED which "tells" you what speed your CPU is running at. (For what it's worth, you set jumpers manually for the LED readout).

Those two extra wires have caused some interesting sights and smells in the seminars. We get some people who are pretty inexperienced (to put it kindly). They realize they need to connect things properly to make it work, but sometimes they get a bit carried away by trying to find a place to plug the extra wire pair into.

One pair of attendees attached this spare pair onto a pair of motherboard pins. This created a short, which quickly melted the insulation on the wires, with the corresponding smell.

In another class, the people working on their computer had everything working but tried to fit this spare wire pair on the wrong connectors on the case's "speed" LED.

This time white smoke came billowing out. It was quite a sight (quickly remedied by yanking the power cord from the back of the computer).

All in a lifetime's work....

This is an actual email that was recieved by our support

address.

I guess the person writting the email must have thought we

were FAMILY support as well?

--------

Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 14:10:18 -0500

From: "username removed"

To: "username removed", 'Edgenet Support' (support@edge.net)

Subject: Tell me..

Please tell me that you are not just running to Mikes

because something is bothering you and you cant talk to me

like you used to run to Jeffs). It makes me feel kinda

crappy when I tell you I'm pregnant and all you can say is

when am I going to get some more or start talking mean to

me (wide load and sh*t). It is starting to feel like the

wedding when nobody really seemed to care how it was all

going. No I dont expect to be doted on just because I'm

pregnant but please don't shut me out.

I LOVE YOU and I want us to go through all this TOGETHER.

While not even humorous at all, this story needs to be told.

We have several female techs at our small systems integerator company and we once had a customer bring a machine in for repair. One of our female techs started to help the man out, taking his name and filling out the ticket and whatnot, after this she asked him to describe the problem and he said "can I please speak to a technician about this" -- that was OK, she gets that all the time, BUT she then said "Sir, I AM a technician" he said "Well, I want to speak to a MALE technician."

She doesn't get pissed easily, and we had never encountered such blatant sexisim before. She got our service manager who explained to the man that she was competent and could help him. The customer got irate and demanded that he talk to a male technician -- this pissed off our SM, who promptly told the man to take his PC and leave, we didn't need customers like him.

This man had the audacity to call the owner of the company and complain.

FYI: This man was not over 50, so you coudn't even chalk it up to "slightly and humorously senile" -- he was just a plain asshole.

The funniest call I have gotten was from a guy who called wanting to know how to find out what his computer's fax number was. It was just about all I could do not to laugh at the poor guy.

I was standing in the front of my store, and an irate customer walked in, with an opened scanner. He then berated me for selling him a Wintel scanner, because the manual was written (by Umax) for both the Mac and Windows and because he was following the instructions and they weren't the same. The menu choices weren't the same. After listening to the customer for several minutes, I then asked him, when the manual says, click on the icon, do you click, or single click. He then got red in the face, packed up the scanner, and said, if this doesn't work, I'll be back in five minutes. I haven't seen the customer since.

This one was pretty recent:

I had a new customer call me up and told me that all her computers had died, nothing was working... I went out and found an old SCO Unix 286 box. ESDI drive was totaly trashed. Where the hell can you find an ESDI 85MB these days, eh? At any rate, she said she that she kept regular backups, and the most recent one she had done twice, seeing as it's the end of the financial year and that the computer was so old. Great, I think, this should be EASY.

Never think that.

I installed SCO 386 (the only think I had laying around at the moment) onto a new Pentuim system, worked fine, installed her old tape drive on the box, tested it out with tar, no problems whatsoever. Tried to restore her data, tar says nothings on the tape. What? OK, tried her other backup tape. Same deal... kept going back further and further in time, finally a year old tape worked fine. Well, that didn't do any good (they have no hard copy of their data, no possibility of recreating it by hand.)

Finally I asked her to describe to me how she backed up her data. She said she ran the utility "sh backup" which was a shell script that the propriteary vendor had set up for her. Then she said that "after I get the error messages at the end, I take the tape out..."

"What!?"

Turns out that she had called the company who wrote the app and asked them about it (they haven't supported this system for YEARS) and they said "don't worry about it, it's normal." This was the type of tape drive that wrote the data, then rewinds to write the header. If there's an error, it stops -- the data may be written but you can't get to it without a header. I rigged up something to pull the raw data off the tape to see if there was anything I could do with it. Well, no, see, the vendors "sh backup" backed up the whole system. The app (and the database) didn't get backed up till the end. The "error" message she was getting was "tape full."

No backups, drive trashed, no hard copy. They used this system for their accounts receiveable. They're screwed.

1. Some years ago, I worked in a company where they were buying laptops by the dozen.

Very often the employees already got their brand-new shiny machine, but had to make an appointment about installing network software. The system administrator was wondering

why one of the managers had not shown up yet; she had sent him an e-mail about the

appointment more than a week ago.

2. At the same company, a secretary wanted to save two sections from a large report

(WP 5.x in a DOS environment) to a smaller file on disk: the introduction and the

conclusion. She complained that the first part gave no trouble, but saving the last

part made a mess of her screen. After looking how she tried to save the files, it

was all clear to me: the introduction was saved as INT (no problem at all), and

the conclusion was saved as CON... (yeah, a fine mess on the screen)

3. Here comes a real moron:

It: My colleague who always turns on the computer is out for lunch, how do I

print the text ?

Me: Can you see the printer icon, top left?

(Even this took a while, but just wait for the best joke of all.)

Me: Now click on that icon once.

It: Whaddya mean, click on that icon?

Me: You know, use the mouse.

A strange "DOINK" is heard through the telephone.

It: Doesn't seem to print yet.

Can you imagine this moron, tapping with the mouse on the monitor screen?

And can you imagine me, ROTFL?

I got a phone call from a frantic tech writer working on a deadline.

(Keep in mind this guy lives 90 minutes from the site, is working at home

and it's 2pm Friday)

WRITER : I need help! My laptop just died!

ME : What happened?

WRITER : I was working when all of a sudden it just shut down!

ME : Hmm...could you check the power cable and make sure it's plugged in?

WRITER : It *is* plugged in! What am I going to do?

ME : Check the battery and make sure that's in properly.

(pause)

WRITER : Yeah, it's in.

After several minutes of trying to work around the problem, we get nowhere.

I tell him I'll go get a spare and wait for him to come in.

I walk over to the other side of the building and get the spare, and when I come back

there's a voicemail on my machine:

WRITER : Uh, (*&*&(*@), I'm really embarrassed about this...I just checked

the power cable and it turns out it WASN'T plugged in...

Ok. I'm the computer guy of my grade, helping people with problems. I don't usually get mad, but when somehting so obvious or repeditive comes up , I tend to heat up.

In the lab one day, a girl screams, then my name and some swear words. I walk over, look at the screen. "Non-system disk or disk error? Is my disk ruined?" I take the disk out of the drive, and hit enter.

I'm typing and all of a sudden I get hit. "My file won't come up!!!" I look at it. "And why are you trying to open the autoexec file? Are you that dumb?????!!!!! IT'S ON THE A: DRIVE!!!!!!" "Oh." she says timidly.

I am a web developer at a start up company. Because its so small, the programmers also double up as tech support. Well, one day the vice president of the company came up to me in the middle of a meeting and placed his laptop in front of me. He explained that he has been getting major spam from porn sites(only) and couldn't figure out why. I scrolled through his cache and figured out that he was surfing these sites and entering his email address. Demanding an answer, I tried (as politely as i could) to explain that something must have gone wrong and we could talk about it in private later. He didnt get it and he still wanted an answer (in public). Finally, I blurted out, when you look at porn, dont give them your email address. I got fired the next day.

We get calls from people wanting to cancel, and their whole reason for cancelling is they are experienceing general protection faults and other strange messages....now what's funny is the line they give, "You sell such crappy products!"

Now think about this for a second.

I work for a cable company ISP with thousands of customers, and none of them are having these problems. Not one of them calls every 30 minutes with another problem for the record books. That makes YOU look like the idiot for cancelling our wonderful (and super high speed) service. I say, GO back to 56K! You idiot!

Glad I could get my rant out...hehehehe 8-)

CD

I had a freind who had recently installed a computer game,

he wanted to play the game, but he couldn't get it to run.

I came, and he never thought about putting the CD in.

"Internet helpdesk, how can I help you?"

"Yes ma'm, I haven't been able to get online for two days!"

"Can you tell me exactly what is happening when you try to get online?"

"Well, I think the problem is in my PP connection......"

"Internet Helpdesk, how can I help you?"

"Yeah... I keep getting an error that my password is bad, but I know I'm typing it right."

"Let's take a look. Click on setup then choose 'change username and password'."

"Okay... I got it."

"Now tell me... is what's there now in uppercase or lowercase letters?"

"It's all lower class, m'am....."

Greetings out there in Tech-Land. I work for a local ISP that does tech support for many smaller companies in the South and MidWest USA.

As always i recieve a high amount of ignorant customers, who despite telling them numerous times what something does, they just dont get it or dont want to.

Such is the case at hand....

ME: Internet Tech Support, may i have your username please?

Cust: Umm..XXXXX.

ME: Ok, and who's your local ISP?

Cust: XXXX

ME:Using Win95?

Cust: Yes.

ME: How may i help you today?

Cust: Well i need more RAM before i can run your software, that's what it says on the package. So i need to delete the software off here.

ME: Ok.

(I proceed to take her into her HD where she can delete the folder where our software installs into, but its not there. So after trying a few more places like Add/Remove, and File: search for XXXX software. Nothing! Our software was no where to be found.)

ME: Umm, it seems the software has already been deleted from your system.

Cust: Well, i have this thing here called Network Neighborhood. That wasn't there till one of your other techs helped me with the software.

ME: Ok, well don't worry about Net. Neigh. it's just something used for LAN's..our software doesnt put that on your system.

Cust: Right..but when i click on it then click on 'Entire Network' it tells me it cant browse the network..

Me: (sigh) Exactly..i just explained that the reason that icon appears is becuase someone added 'Client for MS Networks' in your net. comps.

And only businesses with LAN's or hooking 2 comps. together use it. Its nothing to worry bout..

Cust: Well then how come when i go up into the Program menu it has XXXX software listed there with all the other progs?

ME: Those would be the shortcuts left from the software, those i can delete for you..

(Then take her in and delete it from StartMenu Progs.)

Thinking by then i'm done with the call and she understood what i explained, (mistake #1000 on my part) she then started babbling again bout NEtwork Neighborhood.

AGAIN, i explained slowly what its for and finally just said not to bother clicking on it.

I've probably had worse calls since my Tour of Duty with tech support, but i've come up with one simple rule/advise:

Assumption is the mother of all **** up's!

This was an interesting and I think somewhat unusual problem:

I had just set up a system in a friend's home and fired it up to find that the monitor was doing the most unusual wobbling I had ever seen - sort of a combination of horizontal AND vertical..

So I thought, OK, has to be the monitor itself, the video card, the cable, or just maybe the power supply. We went back to the place where she had purchased the system, and got replacements for all of those components,

and installed them one by one, starting, of course, with the new monitor. Nothing changed!

This was driving me nuts. We then replaced the motherboard and memory and even changed out the HD - no joy.

We finally called an electrician in desperation and he checked the power circuit - completely normal.

It was then, and only then, that I glanced out the window a few feet away and noticed a utility pole sitting outside with several large transformers on it, and the light bulb went on.

We moved the computer into another room away from the pole, and bingo, everything was just perfect.

My friend subsequently called the utility company and complained, and they responded by sending out a tech who measured some god-awful magnetic flux in the original room,

and then proceeded to tell her that they wouldn't do anything about it.

She ended up selling that condo and moving back east..

This isn't about computers, but I think it's funny none the less...

Last week my wife woke me up with the comment, "the garbage disposal won't work and I don't have time to fix it - please look at it."

My wife and I are both EE's, so this didn't seem too daunting a task.

I hit the wall switch a few times, and while nothing happened, the switch felt ok. Got under the sink and used the little wrench to manually rotate the thing, and it moved with no problem. Went to the breaker box and confirmed the breaker wasn't tripped.

Got out the VOM and checked for current thru the switch - perfectly normal.

At this point my wife walks in and says "is that damn thing hardwired under there or plugged into an outlet?"

Pointed my flashlight, and noticed the plug hanging out of the socket.

My wife has been telling everyone we know about this little incident....

I work in the I.T department of a college and this problem

occured while i was sorting out another.

In the college we have an open access I.T centre with around 40

machines set up on the novell network, and 10 set upwith internet

access the problem occured with 2 of the internet machines.

The problem being that while they were being used the power just

cut out. Now as you would expect in an I.T centre it is staffed

by people who know about computers so the call came in and i went

and checked it out. on getting there I asked the usual questions

"have you checked the connections"

"what was the last thing you did" and so on.

First thing i tried was to switch them on, nothing, so i checked

the connections at the back of the machines, fine no problem there

so i checked the main plug, which was an extension lead, everything

fine there so i traced back to the next connection which surprisingly

was not connected so i burst out laughing and plugged it back in,

went round the front of the machines and hey presto they worked.

i walked out laughing my head off and when asked what the problem

was by the head of the I.T centre I told her it wasn't connected in

front of about 25 students she was giving an induction to.

i know this happens more commonly than not but the fact that it was

in a room with about 5 people more than capable with computers made

it an unforgettable experiance maybe it was because it was Monday.

1. When I worked in a Data Security department our main-

frame had a dial-back modem bank. You would dial in, enter

your ID and password, and it would hang up on you and

call you back, ensuring it was both you and you were at

your pre-defined location. We got a call from a sales

person who was upset that he couldn't get this feature

to work while he was aboard a moving train.

2. This is of course, my fault. I added a prompt to a

program on our financial system which asked the

user "Are you SURE you want to delete file (filename) ?"

It's my fault because I forgot to add Y/N at the end. User

called, upset that it wouldn't work because they replied

"SURE" to the prompt.

3. Never lie to tech support. They KNOW.

User's application has an option for performing a user-

controlled backup of their data. They also have the ability

to restore the original data if they want to. User called,

upset that the data on the system suddenly was no longer

current. User claimed they had just done a backup, and

nothing else (practically on a stack of bibles).

Review of the logs revealed that the user had done a

restore of 3-month old data, then a backup, then another

backup just to be sure. Of our production financial system.

(big company!) I added a password to the restore option.

4. Dead keyboard. User swears no damage, droppage, nor

spillage. 10 seconds later... angry, dripping tech. User

spilled at LEAST 1/2 cup of coffee into the keyboard. User

acted surprised at the interruption of service.

5. User was performing backup of their system... getting

error claiming backup failed because someone was holding

the files open. User said they had kicked everyone out of

the system from "my other terminal". The other terminal,

of course, was logged into the application, holding files

open.

A friend of mine told me this rib tickler about his life at customer support for a major manufacturer.

A customer purchased their computer off the HSC for a friend of his, and was furious that the computer was "stealing tokens." My friend tried his best to get a better description from this guy, but he was belligerent, slurred his words, and insited that he was sent some sort of Vegas Poker machine instead of a home computer. This call was sent to a supervisor who called back an hour later, and spoke with his wife. The "Tokens" were CD's, and they would put them in, hear a clatter, and the CD would be gone! On top of that, the machine was no making an "awful racket." They asked for the computer to be sent back to the plant.

The customer called back a month later, furious that he was billed for a "misuse" charge. After they looked at the ticket, it turns out this guy had put his tower case *on its side* like a desktop. This made the CD-ROM lie perpendicular to the way it was supposed to. The CD-ROM tray would open up, take the CD, which once inside would fall out into the case. They guy had about 5 CD's in there, which started hitting the CPU fan, causing the noise. They guy said his previous computer lay that way, why can't his new one?

He was issued a refund.

I work as a systems manager for a large publishing company and we usually do most of the fixing overselves. However, new computers are installed by the vendor as per warranty terms. We recently purchased a PII system that came from the vendors warehouse in knocked-down condition (all parts separately). The next day, a support engineer came to install it. After unpacking all the stuff and fixing all the parts, he proceeded to start the PC. After the usual BIOS and POST routine, the machine would stop. After several resets, he became more exhasperated. Noticing his discomfort, I went to his help and told him that he had to enable the cd rom drive and harddisk in the BIOS ide settings (the floppy drive came with the base PC) and later on install the cd rom drivers and proceed to install the OS from the CD Media. The guy was like duh ? So, I explained to him about BIOS and how it worked. But he was as stupid as a mule. "But, Windows 95 is supposed to detect the harddisk when it starts the first time, right ?"

And they call him Tech Support !!!!

A customer w/ call waiting had the gall to ask this one:

) Dear Big Southern Internet Service Provider,

)

) Is there a feature in Eudora Light whereby the computer notifies you of an

) incoming telephone call? Thanks, -(idiot customer's name removed)

I was working with my friend and mentor "Steve" (name changed to

protect the embarased) over the phone trying to discover the exact

key sequence to get into SETUP on an IBM netstation. We knew

that the key was supposed to be "F1" durring bootup but he had an

early NC and "F1" just would not work and no other combination we

tried would work either. We spent close to an hour with me

searching IBM's web sites trying to find information peculiar

to the model he was using. If any one has ever tried searching

IBM's Web site you know how frustrating that can be. All the information

I could find on all IBM NC's led us to believe that "F1" is

and always was the proper key, but it just would not work.

All of a sudden I heard a groan on the other end of the phone

and then he said he was able to get into SETUP OK now. I asked

him what he had done to do it but he kept saying he didn't

want to tell me, that he was too embarased.

Now "Steve" is a VERY smart man. I learned a lot of what I know

about computers from him. He has three systems in his office

a wintell, an RS/6000 and the NC. and can fly effortlessly

between them. But this one time he just didn't preform a

proper preflight.

You see, it always helps to use the right keyboard!!!

(All my respects to you, my man!)

As a computer lab consultant at my college, one of my duties is to help people who have problems in the lab with things like printing out their documents. The lab I work at has the printer behind the consultant's desk, and as things print out, we sort them out on a table by user-ID so that people can get their printouts. It's utterly amazing to me how many times I've gone through one of these two scenarios:

(L)user: Can you help me? I'm trying to print something, but there's nothing on the printout table with my user name on it.

[I inwardly sigh when I hear this. At this point, it's either an incredibly complex problem that will take me an hour to solve, or it's one of these two scenarios.]

SCENARIO ONE:

Me: Did you log-in to the network?

(L)user: Of course I'm logged-in! Why won't it print?

[I then drag my lazy butt over to their computer and click on the network icon to see what their user name is.]

Me: [Pointing to the user name on the screen] Is that your user name?

(L)user: Uh... no, it should be ABCXYZ01.

Me: I thought you said you logged-in.

(L)user: I AM logged-in.

[That's another thing. It's amazing how many people here feel secure enough that they see no need to log-off when they're done. If I were the practical joker-type, I'd teach a few people the error of their ways... re-name files, move stuff around, use their e-mail address to get them signed up for spam lists, etc. Fortunately for them, my conscience is too strong.]

Me: No you're not. The last person who used this computer didn't log-out, and it looks like you just sat down and started working while still logged-in with that other person's user name. So, all of your printouts came up with this other person's user name on them.

[I then head back to the table with the printouts laid out on it, and find 6 or so copies of their document printed out under the other person's user name. These people somehow all have the idea that if it doesn't work the first time, just try it a few hundred times more.]

(L)user: But I thought that as long as you were hooked into the network you could print.

Me: Well, yes, but then it'll come up under someone else's name. Next time you come in here, log-off as if you were the other person, and then log-in with your own user name.

SCENARIO TWO:

Me: Did you log-in?

(L)user: [blank stare] Uh.... I have to log-in?

Me: Yeah. Don't you remember at orientation at the beginning of the year, when you were in here and we told you that you have to log-in to print?

(L)user: But all I want to do is print out something. I don't want to use anything on the network.

[I usually decide to ignore the fact that they DO want to use something on the network, since all of the programs they would be printing anything from run off of the network.]

Me: Well, right now the only way for you to print something is to log-in to the network, and the file that you want to print will go through the network to the printer. Don't worry, though. In a couple of months we'll be upgrading to a new set of telepathic computers and printers so that you won't need to log-in anymore. The computer will just send the file over to the printer telepathically.

(L)user: They have those now? Cool!

[Okay, okay, I've never actually gone that far, since I'd probably get fired if I ever did. But I'd sure like to someday...]

The university I go to is a Catholic university. With the Church's anti-pornography stand, the faculty decided to make it against university rules to use any of the school's computers or equipment to view or print out porn. So, as a computer lab consultant, enforcing this rule is one of my jobs. This rule is one of the things we explain to people during orientation, and yet there are still people who are idiotic enough to walk into a public computer lab, log-in, fire up Netscape, and start looking at porn until their eyes pop out. These people come in three varieties:

There are the ones who whoop and holler and make all sorts of rude and obvious comments so that EVERYONE (including the lab consultant) knows without a doubt what they are doing, which of course earns these (l)users a quick kick from the lab and an appointment with the dean for "illegal use of university equipment".

Then there are the ones who sneak into the lab, look around stealthily, make sure nobody's watching (by this point, I'm watching, but they never seem to notice), turn the monitor so that as few people as possible can see what they're doing, and then start looking at porn until their eyes pop out. I have yet to see a person turn the monitor who WASN'T looking at porn, so this is always a dead giveaway.

Finally, there are the ones who are smart enough not to do anything out of the ordinary, but then they make the mistake of printing out what they're looking at. Since the printer is behind the consultant's desk and we sort out the printouts by user name, not only do we know who's printing it out, but when this "clever" person walks over and asks where his print-out is, we nab him.

This isn't really what I meant to write about, though. Yep, it gets even more pathetic than what I've already described.

Some people just really have to have their porn, I guess. So, they get a computer of their own and hook it up to the network connection in their room so they can get their porn that way. (This is technically still against the rules, since the network itself is university property, but short of having Public Safety do no-knock porn raids there's no way to catch people who are doing this from the comfort of their own rooms.)

The fun begins when these people decide to get their own printer as well. They hook the printer up to their computer, put in paper, and do everything right except for one little thing: changing the printer settings on their browser. The default setting is to a printer in one of the public labs. So, they find a great picture that they want to save for posterity, click on "Print," and then wonder why it doesn't work. So, they click it a few more times. Meanwhile, the printer in the lab comes to life and spits out the picture, along with the user name of this hapless person on the title sheet.

Who needs no-knock raids when the rulebreakers come right to you? ;)

This story actually comes from my father. A new employee at the company forgot what his network password was. The network administrator wasn't in, but somehow Dad figured out how to re-issue this person a new temporary password and called him up to tell it to him. The temporary passwords were always just a series of numbers.

Dad: Hi, Joe? I've got a new network password for you. It's 123456.

Joe: Okay, thanks. Is that case-sensitive, by the way?

Even a lab consultant can be a complete idiot at times. I've submitted several stories to highlight the idiocy of other people, so I figured it was only fair to share an example of my own stupidity. ;)

One day, myself and one other person were on-shift at a public computer lab at my college. Without warning, all of the computers at one table suddenly switched off, all at the same time. Of course, there were a lot of groans coming from that table from the usual people who work on papers for 3 hours without saving them and other fun things like that.

Immediately, my partner and I sprang to action. I crawled under the table and checked all of the power strips. Because there are so many computers at that table, the power strips are "chained" to each other, with one strip plugged into the next strip etc., all the way to the wall outlet. I glanced at them and decided that they were all still on, so that wasn't the problem. Earlier that week, a power outage had taken down all of the computers in that lab, so I jumped to the conclusion that it was something like that again. My partner checked the electrical box for blown fuses and found nothing wrong, so then I got on the phone with the lab supervisor to report the problem.

Suddenly, those computers turned back on again, so I told the super "Never mind, they came back on" and hung up. I asked the other consultant what had happened.

"Well, I just crawled under the table and saw that the strip closest to the wall was turned off, so I turned it back on."

Whoops. :)

My original suspicion had been correct after all. A user had been swinging her legs and had kicked the switch by accident, thus cutting off power to all of the power strips for that table. My mistake was that I had simply checked to make sure all of the switches were aimed in the same direction. What I failed to notice was that the power strip in question was facing the opposite direction length-wise from the other ones, so its "off" position looked the same as the other strips' "on" position. Needless to say, for the rest of the shift, anyone who needed help went to the other consultant first. ;)

Years ago when dial-up Internet service was new our local big University ran their own dial-up modem pool. I wrote the dialing-up software and got handed the worst of the problem phone calls.

One day a woman calls up, very frustrated. She's installed our software, but she gets a busy signal every time she dials in. At the time we only had about 120 modems, so it was quite possible to get a busy signal at peak times. I asked her to try dialing in before 10AM or after 10PM and there should be no problem.

She calls back a day later, even madder. "Still a busy signal!". I break all the rules and give her our private number to our internal bank of 3 modems that were rarely used. "Still busy!" she says.

What's going on here?? I think of all the sophisticated things that can go wrong with phone rotaries and trunks.... No, it shouldnt be just her problem. I have her double-check the phone number she's dialing.

She: "XXX-XXXX".

Me: Nooo! I told you to put in "YYY-YYYY"

She: No, the label says "Phone number" so I type in my phone number.

Me: "No, you have to specify the phone number you're trying to call. Our modem pool's phone number is 626-9600.

If you type in your own phone number, your modem is going to call you back, and of course your line is busy."

She: "No, the label says phone number and I'm putting in my phone number".

No amount of cajoling could convinve her to type in the modem pool's phone number. She finally hung up. I wonder if she every got rid of that busy signal?

My boss used to have this really crusty old secretary. SHe was used to using her Selectric typewriter and it was really hard to get her to switch to WordStar. After a few months he thought she was up to speed, until one day he asked her to add one paragraph to the middle of page 5 of a 40 page report. She said it would take her all day to do this. Now this was civil service, but even that was a bit much... So my boss surreptitiously watched what she did.

She went to wordstar and opened a file named REPORTQ.005.

She typed in the new paragraph into the midle of the page. Then she went down to line 55 and moved line 56 to the end to a file named "T". Then she saved REPORTQ.005 and opened REPORTQ.006 and read in file T at the top.... and so on..

Yep, she'd been putting one page per file and manually doing the page-wrapping. So adding a paragraph on page 5 required updating the remaining 35 files.

I was reading "Tales from the Techs" the other day and

came across an article titled "Windows sega saturn ?????"

It seems a customer called their help line with a Sega

Saturn asking to get on the internet. The tech told

him "in the most direct and secondary school terms way

that it will never work!!!"

Of course, what this tech obviously did NOT know was that

Sega offered a connection kit for the Saturn which

included a 28.8k modem, PPP dialer, POP3 compliant mail

reader, and a web browser on par with Netscape 1. The

system has so few options that it is almost

impossible to get the settings wrong without making a

typo!

I wonder what will happen when they get calls from the

first microwaves equipped with web browsers going on sale.