Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I am in my first week of a new job doing tech support for an enormous fortune 50 company when I'm asked to help set up a computer for the CEO who has never had one before. So I and the guy I work with spend an entire day in this guy's huge office setting up his new Mac and adding all the company's custom databases and stuff to telnet into the old mainframes and all the mac software, (including the obligatory senior executive copy of flight simulator). This is Thursday, the guy is due back on Monday. Then we spend most of Friday TESTING all this stuff and in the late afternoon our boss comes over and we spend about an hour showing HIM that everything works.

You've gotta understand the kind of status this guy had, nobody under the VP level ever even saw him, he had his own elevator for his CAR so that he was never seen entering or leaving etc etc. So all our butts are on the line with this computer.

Come monday my boss walks into my cube, white as a sheet, says come with him. We walk over to his bosses office - middle of the row, small window- he says there's a problem and we all walk over to HIS bossses corner office - BIG windows- and he has the CEO's secratary (assistant, whatever) on the speaker phone and she's screaming that the computer dosen't work, what's the problem with us etc. So the four of us, me and three levels of boss make the long trip up to the top floor to have our asses handed to us. It's a quiet walk, I'm wondering if I have any more copies of my resume at home. We arrive and cool our heels for about 15 min in his outer office while he's on the phone, then the four of us get waved in. He looks up, not nearly as mad as his secratary was but he says the computer dosen't work at all and who installed it? I say in "Me" and walk around the desk to see what the problem is and sure enough the cursor is jumping all over the screen when he tries to click on an icon. Then I look down and notice the mouse cord, - comeing out from under his wrist - I say "Oh that's so easy to do (I have NEVER seen this before), let me just show you this mouse trick, flip it over and viola, everything is wonderfull, I've never seen the atmosphere in a room warm up so fast in my life. We stayed only long enough for me to show him how to fun Flight Simulator, which he loves and then beat feet out of there. The forth level boss bought us all lunch that day . . .

I too was reading away at tech tales having giggles at the stuppidity of the general public when the phone rang.

Good evening ....... matt speaking, how may i help you.

c...Hello, I can connect but can't see any pages.

m...Ok where did you connect.

c...Dial up netorking

M...Have you launched the browser to view the pages?

c...sorry, I forgot

moral of the story, just give up.

I work as systems support for a company with several branch locations that uses an AS/400. Because of the way our system is set up, many reports I run are sent to a "holding que" then sent from there to the printers at the branch locations.

I received a call one afternoon from a salesperson in one of our branch offices requesting I run a report. Because it was almost five, I told her I would do it first thing in the morning.

So, at 8:00 AM the next morning I ran the report and sent it to her branch printer and verified it had indeed printed.

About 10:00 AM, I recieved this call:

SP: (annoyed)Did you forget about me?

Me: What do you mean?

SP: You were supposed to run that report for me this morning. I've been waiting and I really need it for a meeting later this afternoon.

Me: That is really strange. I sent it to the printer at 8, and the system said it printed just fine.

SP: Oh, maybe I should go and check the printer...Oh, there it is, sorry!

I suppose she thought the Report Fairy would be depositing it on her desk?

Working for an ISP nets you some interesting stories, but this one just blows me away.

Our tech support deparment was pleasantly surprised during this April 1st. We had an unusually low volume of calls on a day of the week that usually is pretty busy. We sat around the office wondering what was going on when one of our customer service reps comes in and says she just got a very odd call.

A customer had called in and asked if she could use the Internet today. Our rep asks why, the customer replies that she'd heard on the radio that the Internet was being shut down for maintenance.

Sometimes you just wanna scream.... :)

At our HelpDesk, we always ask what version of Windows they have on their PC. One of our hilarious stories:

Me: HelpDesk, how may I help you?

Cust: I can't print.

Me: Okay, what version of Windows do you have?

Cust: Ummm, hold on for a minute. (Puts down phone and comes back) I don't have any windows, I sit in a cube.

My friend is a one-man computer store. He sells and services computers. Marvin got a call from somebody who was three hours away that the computer did not work. After driving three hours, he asked to see the problem. Turns out that the person forgot to put the CD in the computer to access some software that required it. Yeah.

The other day I was on a call, and wanted to breifly chat with another tech. I asked the cu to hold, and hit my mute button. After chatting with my buddy, I put the headset back on, only to hear a tinkling sound.... followed by two or three splashes. A few seconds later there was a flush, and the sound of a sink. Everything I heared had a bathroom-like reverb quality to it.

DON'T PEOPLE KNOW WE DON'T USE "HOLD", WE USE *MUTE*?!!?!?!?!

*gag*

I do support for a Direct Broadcast Satellite company,

and the calls we dread are the self-installation calls.

Last week, a man in Arkansas called me to gripe that his

new receiver did not work as the power light on the front

was off. I asked him to plug it into a different outlet

to test, and he told me it was not plugged in at all since

the manual did not specifically say to do so. I told him

he needed to plug it in, and he told me that if the manual

doesn't say to do it he won't and hung up. I have no idea

if he ever figured out that an electrical device has to

have a power source to work!

I work for a small company running a Novell network, we had recently upgraded our computer system to NetWare 5, 100Mbps NICs, PII workstations, and upgraded our accounting software to the newest version. Most of these computers run Win98, and some run DOS 6.22. The OS depended on who was to work on the computer, and what they had to do (Word Processing, Spreadsheets, etc.) We recently hired a new employee who told us upon entering the company that she had previously worked on a computer doing accounting, and knew how to use one very well, and anything that she didn't understand she said "I learn fast". The only thing she would be doing would be using our accounting software inputting data. Our accounting software is for DOS, and her computer was on a 6.22 platform, so it's not that hard to use, and she gets the hang of using it fairly well, and then happens to come upon an error:

Printer error (A)bort (R)etry (I)gnore

Most people at this point, take the time to read the screen and retry, or abort. She was just...nevermind, anyway, so she would call someone in and they would have to look at the screen, determine the printer was not turned on, turn it on, and then press retry. Most people would feel stupid after this and would just make sure the printer was on and turned online the next time. She had called us about 12 times before we just decided that we would turn her computer, and printer on for her in the mornings.

On another occasion, we sent her to another computer to type a document on a Windows 98 computer, she knew how to use the mouse fairly well (which scared us), so she types the document, and hits print, then can't figure out why it won't print on the dot matrix printer next to that computer. As I said earlier our computers are mainly used for accounting using a DOS program, so he have network printers for Windows use, versus our 17" x 11" greenbar paper for the DOS program, she had printed the document a total of 9 times before she asked someone what was wrong. She walked around the building to find someone, instead of picking up the phone and calling for help. When she found someone she happened to be standing next to the network printer she printed the document to, the tech asked her what computer she was working on since her computer didn't have any word processing programs. She told them, and knew that the windows default printer was a laser, not the dot matrix next to the computer she was on, they literally took one step toward the printer and picked up 9 copies of the document she was working on and then handed them to her. Later that day she needed the document again, and couldn't find it, so we had to go find it on that computer, well she was looking on her computer for one count, and then when she got to the right computer, we looked for it, before discovering that it did not have a .DOC extension since she wrote it in notepad. The owner of the company witnessed the whole thing and then replied, "I didn't pay Microsoft for LAN license rights for the entire Office suite for you to use notepad". We thought we had made the computers idiot proof by putting an icon for Word on the desktop, and taking everything out of the start menu, she had done a search for "notepad" to use the text editor. So now, we have just removed the entire start menu, the only thing they get is "Shut Down"...You grow to love ZEN Works.

On yet another occasion (the day after the previous problem) she went to leave for the day and asked where the start button was on her computer so she could shut the computer down. If you remember correctly, she is on a DOS 6.22 computer. For those of you who wondered why we would have PII machines running DOS 6.22 you now know; the people that work for us are just too damn stupid to use windows, and have enough trouble reading and using DOS 6.22.

Me: "Client help center, this is James. How can I help you?"

Caller: "My printer isn't working."

Me: "Do you have any error lights on the panel?"

Caller: "Yes they're all lit up."

Me: "Ok, you may have paper jam sir. Could I get you to remove the printer cover so you can look inside?"

Caller: "The lid is already off."

Me: "It's off right now, before I asked you to remove it?"

Caller: "Yes."

Me: "Put the lid back on."

Caller: "Ok, it's fixed now."

This person has a MAC and was changed over to a IBM. when she placed the Floppy in her 3 1/2 slot on the PC. she called help desk and asked were is the floppy ICON on the desktop is? I told her the IBM does not have a icon that shows up on her desk. I said you have to open up the Explorer or open up the My computer Icon and klick on the Icon that sayes floppy. She said that was stuiped that takes to long. isnt there a easier way? I said No. it is the way IBM is done..... I hope she did not ask how to remove the floppy icon to remove the diskette from the drive. .

At our company we support not only our own HW/SW systems, but we do a site inspection, and installations.

Recently this changed, and we went to a "buy-it and install-it yourself" system. God knows what we were thinking.

As protection for the store's systems and database, we recommend buying a UPS.

ME- Thank you for calling XYZ company? May I have your store number (a few minutes of gathering site specific info). How can XYZ Support help you?

CU - My UPS doesn't work! My computer screen is black!

ME - Hmm. On the front of the UPS, are there any lights?

CU - Just a red one, and its' beeping at me!

ME - Well, that indicates that the UPS is not getting power. Is the UPS plugged in?

CU - Of course its' plugged in!

ME - Well (years of experience), just check once for me, trace the plug back from where it comes out of the UPS to where it plugs into the wall.

CU - (after a minute) Yes, its plugged into the power strip.

ME - Okay, and trace the plug for the power strip and make sure its plugged in.

CU - (after a minute) Yes, its plugged in too.

ME - Hmm, well, is there some way to test the wall plug the strip is plugged into, to see if it is getting power, like a lamp or something.

CU - Oh, the strip isn't plugged into the wall, its plugged into the UPS.

( I lost it )

TS: Thank you for calling. How may I help you?

NP (neophyte): Uh, I cannot get this cover off the computer.

TS: Why are you trying to do that?

NP: I dropped the box and now something is rattling inside.

TS: OK, I will walk you through the problem. First, let's remove all the screws that hold the cover in place. There should be six of them and they are located....(description followed).

NP: OK. Got them all.

TS: All six?

NP: Yep. (sounding quite proud of herself)

TS: OK. Now, carefully slide the cover off of the box and

do not touch anything inside until I tell you to.

NP: (grunting and groaning with effort)...it won't come off.

TS: Let's see. Six screws from the front, sides and back, right?

NP: (Growing impatient) Yes, I have them in my hand!

TS: OK. Let's review where the screws came from....

(28 minutes later, the cover is still on the computer, the neophyte is losing her patience and I, the techie, am thinking I need to find another career...one that doesn't require talking!)

TS: Well, ma'am, I have tried to think of everything that could be keeping you from being able to remove that cover. It almost sounds as if the dog is sitting on top of it!

He isn't, is he? (chuckle to keep the mood from exploding)

NP: (sheepishly) would it help if I took the monitor off the top of the box?

AARRGHHHH!

The hands-down worst job I ever had was when I was first starting out, and what was then the largest ISP in the country (still is actually). One call in particular stands out in my mind.

Me: Thanks for callin *** yadda yadda yadda.

Him: Ok, I have just about had it with you people, I'm trying to install your software, but it keeps corrupting my hard drive, and making it unreadable.

Me: (thinking)Wonderful, 5 minutes before lunch, and I decide to "take one more call". Word of advice, don't EVER do it.

Me: Ok, what exactly is happening?

Him: Well, I put the disk in and try to install it, but it kicks back a message saying that my hard drive is corrupt...

Me: What would the error....

Him: So, I reboot my machine, and format it. I then got Windows installed again, installed all my software and got it working

Me: (thinking) Good for you.

Him: Then I try to install your software and it does it again, so then I go through...(this is where he loses it, and runs off a string of explicitives). So, I format again, and reinstall and now I'm trying it for the third time.

Me: Ok, sir. Do you mind telling me how you're trying to install our software?

Him: I put in the disk and turn on the machine.

Me: (seeing where this is going, but still not believing it) Ok, (chuckle, chuckle) what does the error message say?

Him: "Non system disk or disk error" (then he starts complaining again)

Me: I tell you what sir, why don't you try popping that disk out of the drive, and hitting any key.

Him: (clunk)...(click) What the....you mean that corruption is recoverable?

Ok, now that was the last thing I expected him to say at that point. I was expecting a sheepish "oops" or anything but that.

Me: Now, why don't you read and follow the directions on the label of that disk?

Man, some people....

People should not be allowed to use a computer when drunk, blitzed, stoned, stupid (and not under any influence), etc..

You may be wondering why I say this. As a tech for the big COMPuter store in the USA, I get lots of strange calls. Today I got an entire sequence of them..

[Normal greeting garbage omitted]

Call 1:

Me: And what can I do for you today?

User: The Internet is broken!!!

M: Um... (rolling eyes) Alright, could you please clarify that?

U: The internet is broken! I double clicked on Browse the Internet, and it gave me an error!!! I demand that you fix it!!!

M: Is your computer plugged into the telephone line?

U: It needs a telephone line?

Turns out that the l/user had never hooked up the machine to the telephone line. Let alone setting up the necessary account with an ISP, etc.

That wasn't all that bad compared to the next call.

Call 2:

M: What can I do for you, sir?

U: (blearily) Uhh... my Mac can't print.

M: OK, what kind of Mac, and what type of printer?

U: (more blearily) Uhhhmmmmm it's a... a.... a... a..... iMac. And it's an Epshun Sev-sev-seven-fort..y.

M: Have you installed the drivers for the printer?

(brief exchange about what exactly drivers are)

M: OK, please get out the Software Install CD that came with your iMac.

U: Ohhhkay.. I gotta reach over and get it.....

(THUD) (SNORE)

M: Sir? Sir? Are you okay?

U: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

M: Sir?

U: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...........

At this point I disconnected the call. I heard back from him later, though, through another tech. It seems he'd had way too many that night, tried to get his iMac fixed, and when reaching for the CD's had passed out.

Call 3:

M: What seems to be the problem, sir?

U: My iMac screen is all messed up! It looks like someone spilled a paint set all over the screen.

Now some iMacs had a video problem, so I started walking him through the troubleshooting procedures to eliminate a software problem. As I proceeded, I noticed these descriptions of his iMac...

U: My iMac is such a pretty green color.

U: I like this blue iMac.

Hmm, say I, light finally dawning. Could be just that he has a blue-green (Bondi!) iMac and can't decide what color it is. I decide to run a test on him a couple of minutes later...

M: And what color is your iMac, sir?

U: It's a cool orange.

M: (!!!!) Alright, sir, you can stop what you're doing. What's going on is perfectly normal and the colors will go away in a few hours. If they don't, turn that iMac off and come back tomorrow afternoon. It should be OK by then.

U: You sure, man?

M: (stifling laughter) Yes, I'm sure it'll be okay.

U: OK, thanks man!

(click)

I don't know what he was on, but it appeared to be some good stuff.

And the capper, so far today:

Call 4:

M: And what's the problem today?

U: My iMac has a blank screen.

M: Have you plugged it in?

U: I thought this thing ran off a battery!!!! It even shows you how to replace the thing in the manual.

Of course, what he was referring to was the clock battery. Took 20 minutes to explain that that was not the main power source for the machine.

Don't worry, plenty more of these people noted in my archives.

I'm no techie, but I thought I knew the basics of working a computer.

You know, turning it on, making sure everything is plugged in etc. Well

I work for a small medical office and we are beta testing a knew

electronic claims software. So I finally get the software downloaded and

am speaking to the tech support guy to get everything running (a truly, wonderful,

patient human)

Me: ok, everything is in.

TS: ok now lets send a test batch, just click on send claims now.

M: no problem,

(hit key,immediate error)

M: it's not working, the modems not running

TS: ok lets due a modem check

2 (two) hours of checking the modem connections, the software

thinking this new program doesn't work.

Ts: ok, let's just try modem check again.

Me: ok, (hit key, nothing)

Me: OH MY GOD!

TS: what????

ME: I am sooooooo sorry.

TS: WHAT???

ME: we only have one line for modem that also shares with fax.

Dr. put a splitter in because modem kept trying to answer

fax. well, I sorta forgot to plug it in.

I haven't been able to reach him since then. I think it's personal.

Working at a backwater ISP can sometimes lead to very arrogant customers (Especially upsetting to them is the fact all our tech support isn't out of high school yet). Here is one of my favorite calls:

Me: This is Jim. How may I help you?

User: I'm sick and tired of you people cutting me off when I read my email! (rants and swears for several minutes)

Me: Hmmm. Okay, this is your first time calling so let me walk you through some settings.

User: No, I don't think thats needed. I had a friend of mine look at it and he said it was fine.

Me: Did that person work for us?

User: No. It was my neighbor's son.

Me: (oh great...) Well, alright, go ahead and open My Computer.

User: No. I'm just too upset right now, maybe I'll call back later.

Me: Ummm, alright. Thank you for calling. *click*

Several days later, we received a letter from the customer, which basically said this:

"...I believe I was mistreated and that your technician was rather rude to me. He insisted that the problem was a setting in my computer, which isn't at all possible because I had someone else check, not to mention that I have a Ph.D. in psychology. Next time I call, I would like to speak to an adult technician..."

A copy of this letter is proudly displayed in my cubicle.

A user just called in saying that she was getting an

error message when using Outlook Express

"Message 22 could not be retrieved. Error: she is wearing a

loose fitting pink dress, sleeveless."

I looked through her messages and found no mention in any of

them of a pink dress. I deleted the offending message and

she tried again, same error. This time on message 23. We

checked her HD and found that she had enough space on it,

checked a couple other messages. Finally deleted message 23

as well. This time it worked. But when she downloaded her

mail this time it gave her the prompt retrieving message x

of 33. Which was faboo until she hit message 34, 35, etc.

The machine finally quit downloading after message 40 of 33.

(there were only 33 in the box..I'd just telneted into it

to delete the trouble messages.)

Ok, I thought I knew the stupidness of our customers. A few minutes ago, however, a customer called. Here is a short part of the transcript.

...

Cust: IP address says all zeros.

Me: How about your Domain Name Server

Cust: sam.

(mute for rather a long time laughing)

I never did figure out if she actually put sam in for the DNS, or why she said that, or anything about it. I don't think I really want to know.

After an hour of trying to help a lady get her program

to work I asked her to hold up her CD to the monitor. After

doing so I asked her if she could see the scratch and told

her not to take it away from the moniter. in a couple

minutes she noticed the scratch and I sent her a replacement

and gave her my direct line. A week later I get an upset,

sounding guy asking me what I thought I was doing telling her

to hold the CD up to the Screen. I explained that after an

hour on the phone with her this is the only way I could get

her off the phone. He said " I understand, This is the 5th

time I've been out here in two weeks to help her!"

As the entire IT dept. for a non-profit I get an uncomfortable number of phone calls which contain the following problem in various forms:

[Problem, not that it matters much - the user is trying to connect 2 computers together via ethernet using a crossover. I sent him a 6' crossover but he needed a longer one so he ordered a 50' crossover only they sent him a 50' patch]

User: The cable you gave me works but the cable they sent me doesn't

Me: [Already suspecting they didn't send a crossover] Okay, do you have the cablein your hand?

User: Yes

Me: Hold the cable so that one plug is in your left hand and the other plug is in your right hand.

User: Hold on, let me go get the cable.

Was I unclear????

I work in the help desk at a large state university, and as such support everyone from CS and CE professors to freshman computer virgins. Supporting so many different levels of users has desensitized me enough that I don't get shocked very often, but this one got me...

Me: IT Help Center, this is John.

iUser: Hi, this is ___ in room ___ ___ hall. I just got a new iMac, and the disk drive isn't working.

Me: OK, how isn't it working? Does the CD show up on your desktop when you put it in?

iUser: Oh no, not the CD, that works fine. The disk drawer part of it doesn't work though. I put a disk in, and it doesn't pop up on the screen, and now it's stuck in the machine.

[sinking feeling . . .]

Me: You mean a floppy disk?

iUser: Yeah.

Me: (pregnant pause). . . . Where did you put the disk in?

iUser: In the disk drawer. (like, duh, attitude)

Me: You mean, the same place you put CD's.

iUser: (exasperated) Yeah.

[feeling confirmed . . .]

Me: (waiting to get all the bad news before I let her know what's going on) And now you can't get it out? What happens when you press the button on the front of the drive?

iUser: It just pops out a little, but it acts like it's stuck. Isn't there a hole for a paper clip or something like there was on the old Macs?

At that point I gave her the news that iMac's don't come with floppy drives, and the CD-ROM definitely wouldn't double for one. After much work with pliers and paperclips, we freed the disk (does this mean it's M-O now?) and even discovered the CD still worked . . . but this isn't the end. A little while later, she called back and said that she now had the USB Superdisk drive I had suggested, but the disk was now stuck in _that_ drive. It seems that the disk didn't survive our little extraction procedure all that well, and her brand new superdisk was going to require some surgery of its own . . .

[Comment about Steve Jobs' vision of extending computing to non-technical people deleted. The iMac has obviously fulfilled that little role.]

i work as a computer services consultant at kinko's. and although techinically, it isnt tech support, its the closest i ever plan on getting to it.

Today, i had a man walk in with a rewritable cd and tell me that he wanted to print his document. I figured it must be a huge document or whatever, to each his own.

several minutes later he calls me over, and i see an "E: is not accessible" error message on his screen. i take out the cd from the drive and look at it very carefully and notice that it hasnt even been burned, altho it has some scratches and fingerprints on it.

i get a sudden feeling in the pit of my stomach and casually ask him if he has a cd burner.

(customer) a what? *blank look*

(me) a cd burner

(customer) well i dont know what that is but i saved it to the e: drive!

i couldnt believe it.. he thought that he could save his documents onto a blank cd via his cd-rom! i patiently and carefully explained to him that it wasnt possible. which also made me wonder if he now had a stack of useless blank cds sitting at home.

that was one of the more memorable experiences.. my daily annoyances occur something more like this

(customer) i need to use a computer

(me) would you like a pc or a mac

(customer) no, i want windows

OR

(customer) i need to *copy* this (which ALWAYS confuses me at first.. do they want to copy the disk or do they want a printout??)

(me) what program was it done in?

(customer) windows 97

or best of all:

(customer) i need a resume/flyer/24"x36" oversized print/whatever done

(me) okies, *takes the order* a proof will be ready the same time tommorrow

(customer) what? you cant do it now??

and then i have to explain to them that that pile of papers sitting on my desk isnt there just for decoration.

i must honestly say that i admire any person that can do tech support, and i always tell that to any tech support person i talk to.

I work for a mid-sized ISP in Texas, and last night I received a call from a gentlemen who said that he had just moved to the area and had just subscribed to our service a couple of days ago. And every time he tried to connect, he got an error message about there not being a dial tone.

(At this point I "Assumed" the worst, the modem not connected to the phone line.)

He told me that they only had one phone line, and he knew that it worked, because that was what he was using to talk to me. So naturally, I asked him if had checked the phone jack, and he told me that yes, he as a "Tester" and had tested the circuit. (At this point, all of the alarms were sounding in my head - OH NO! Someone who thinks he knows what he's doing!).

I asked him if he had checked the phone line between the computer and the jack. He said "Of course!"

I then instructed him to plug a phone into the other jack in the back of the modem to make sure that he was truly getting a dial-tone thru the modem. He said he had, and he was talking on it now.

I asked him to explain to me how he had it all wired up. He told me that the phone line came from the jack to a surge protector, then to the modem.

Next, I asked him to check and make sure that he had the phone line plugged into the correct jack on the modem. He puts the phone down, and in a few seconds I hear D**M! He comes back to the phone, and said, "Sorry to have bothered you, I believe I have it fixed now." Now I was curious, and at this point, I was needing to be amused. So I asked him what was wrong with it, he told me that he had made a "mistake" in his wiring, he had come out of the wall jack to the surge protector, and had the phone plugged in to that, he had not plugged into the modem!

I work at the Information Systems department in an educational institution, and one of the aspects of my job is the use of a text scanner to process Teacher Evaluation forms which are evaluated through the use of filled in bubbles, not unlike the stuff we filled in for the SAT and numerous other tests. Basically, I scan in these sheets, and then pint out some reports compling the data. Well, I recieve these filled out eval forms from the registration offices, and they usually end up in my hands in Manilla envolopes with labels on the outside identifying the professor and course being evaluated (course, it's on each sheet too).

The following occurred after a minor modification of the system we run on here.

Caller: Hey, I have some evaluation sheets for you to pick up.

Tech: OK, I'll come pick em up in a bit.

Caller: But the labels on the outside look different.

Tech: Do they have the proper info on them?

Caller: Yea, but it is in a different order.

Tech: No big deal. I can accomodate reading info in a slightly different order.

Caller: But will the scanner handle it?

Tech: What do you mean?

Caller: Well, when you scan the evaluations forms, won't the different labels throw the scanner off?

She was basically under impression that I was taking the entire Manilla envelope, running it through the scanner, and that SOMEHOW the scanner was able to read not only the label stuck onto the envelope, but also every one of the 40+ evaluation forms inside. And to think that they got on our case if we even filled in the bubble badly on those tests. Heck! These things have X-Ray Vision!

I had been asked to upgrade a computer from a 486 up to a

PII 350. Of course I needed the new motherboard, case,

etc....... Anyways, once I had everything working properly

I sent the computer off to the user (who I will call Tina)

in North Carolina.

The next day, one of my fellow employees (who I will call

Stacey) recieved a call from Tina. Tina told

Stacey that the computer was giving her the

'keyboard error or keyboard not present' message. Stacey

asked her if it was plugged in, and she replied yes but

it was a bit loose. This kind of puzzled Stacey, and

she asked what she meant about it being loose. Tina

said that she had it on, but she could rotate it while it

was hooked up, which obviously shouldn't happen. So

Stacey asked what she had it hooked up to.

I had forgotten to include the adapter for a DB9 to a PS2.

Since she no longer had the DB9 port, she decided it

had to go somewhere on the back. She ended up jamming it

onto the BNC connector on the network card.

After making sure a computer I upgraded worked I sent it off

to the site that it came from. The next day I get a call

from a user I will call Tina.

The system I had upgraded uses a software package called

MECCA, which is used for business forms composition. The

computer uses two screens, one for text and the other for

graphics.

Tina: Chris my windows come up, but nothing on the text

monitor.

Chris: Your windows?

Tina: On the big monitor, the windows come up, but not the

text.

When you first turn the computer on the graphics monitor

displays clouds along with the company log (kind of like

the Win95 screen).

Chris: Is the text monitor on?

Tina: Yes, the light is even on.

Chris: Is it flashing yellow, or is it green?

Tina: Yellow.

Chris: You probably don't have the text monitor plugged in

properly. Check to make sure that you have it hooked

up.

She checked, and it was on good. So I figured the

Video Card must of come loose during shipment. So I told

her to open up the computer and reseat the card.

Chris: Ok now turn the computer on and see if that made

a difference.

Tina: The computer is already on.

Chris: The computer is already on? You didn't reseat that

card with the computer powered on did you?

Tina: You told me to reseat the card, didn't say anything

about turning it off.

Chris: Well you better send it back to me then.

Tina: Why do I need to do that?

Chris: Because I can assure you that the computer is

probably fried.

I can't believe I was able to hold back my laughter, I felt

like I was going to burst.

If you are Canadian, you will be able to appreciate this ancedote more than if you aren't....

A couple of years ago when I was working as the service manager for a small retail computer store, a customer came in and was complaining that setting his keyboard up for the French Canadian layout had re-mapped a number of his keys and he didn't know which ones where which (he didn't have a French keyboard).

With as straight a face as possible, I looked him straight in the eye and said:

"Uhoh, you should NEVER set your keyboard for the French Canadian layout"

"Why?", he asked neverously...

"Because then your keyboard has a tendancy to try and separate itself from the rest of the computer..."

Dead silence.

I work for a relatively large ISP doing Technical Support for Connectivity issues.

Tonight I had a customer call up with a problem about not taking his username and password when trying to connect.

Before I was going to tech him, he proceeded to tell me that at the moment when we were speaking, he had another computer already connected with that account name. I asked him, "You mean you're online with that computer right now, and you're trying to get online with another computer at the same time with the same account?" And he said Yes. I told him that he cannot be online on 2 computer with the same account name. Just not gonna happen. He sounded disappointed but said, "Oh, okay, so I have to disconnect the OTHER computer in order for me to go online with THIS one." I told him that was right.

*like a dog owner to his dog* Goooooooooood boy. =O)

I am calling a customer in India from an English speaking country. Upon picking up the call, I asked, "May I speak to Mr Raja please?" A woman answered. However, she does not understand English and replied me in Tamil. I then said, "Excuse me Ma'm, do you speak English?" She replied me in Tamil again. Getting a bit annoyed, I said, "Excuse me Ma'm, could I speak to someone to knows English or do you speak English?" Finally, the woman at the other end speaks English. She said "Wrong Number" and hang up the phone.

A friend of mine had worked at IBM for 22 years. When he

retired, he wanted to go into business for himself doing tax

returns and such, so out of loyalty he bought an IBM OS/2

system (OS/2 was brand new at the time). They had to back-order

the 3.5" drive for him, and when it arrived he installed it

following the instructions.

When I was visiting him, he mentioned that the drive didn't work...

I took a look at it, making sure it was properly connected,

etc. Everything looked fine, until a check of the config

files revealed that the installation program had MISSPELLED

the name of the driver file in the config...

(sigh)

Tech) Blahblah, may I help you?

Cus ) The speakers are not working.

Tech) What do you mean when you said "my speakers are not working?"

Cus ) (Angry)I PLUGED IT IN and it doesn't work. There is no sound coming out.

Tech) Okay. What type of sound card do you have?

Cus ) I don't know what it is.

Tech) Okay. (explained to her what "sound card" is)

Tech) Now look at the back of the PC and tell me if you see any hole with the lables like In/Out, Mic

Cus ) Ummm.. I don't see any hole like that.

Tech) ?? Where do you plug the speakers to?

Cus ) I pluged it to the.. you know.. the CD-rom hole in front.

Tech) Err.. that's not the hole mam. That's for the headset. (explain blahblah)

Cus ) Oh then how can I make the speakers to work?

Tech) I recommend you to buy a sound-card so you can plug your speakers to. ** Grin **

Back in the old DOS days, I was working telephone support

for a specialty software company whose user base was, well,

"technologically unsophisticated." Understanding that, I

always spoke slowly and started at what I regarded as a

very basic level.

We needed to run a .bat file that the caller insisted was

not on his system. So we began the file quest. After

guiding him through exiting from the program (which, in

over a year of use, he had never done), I told him to type

"dir *.bat /s/p" to find all the batch files and pause to

look at the list. (All you new users who grew up GUI'd:

don't worry about the details of the command.)

Getting the result of "bad command or file name" repeatedly,

and having him swear he was typing exactly what I told him

to, I had him try one last time--then asked him to read to

aloud to me every single character on the screen. You can

probably guess that I heard him say, "d i r s p a c e *..."

...From that day forward, my new method was to say "then tap

the space bar for a space" ...

I've been a computer technician for a large international computer firm now for over a year, and I've had some real winners, but I think this guy takes the cake. He called in stating that he's running Windows 95, and every time he turns his computer on, it runs a scandisk. This is on his new computer. His old computer didn't do that. Well, it took me fifteen minutes of actual troubleshooting before I got around to asking the guy how exactly he shut his computer down. He stated that he just pushes the power button...that's how he's always done it. I tried to explain to the guy that you have to click on Start, then Shutdown, to shut the computer off properly. Mind you, this was back in '98, and the guy was telling me that he's been running Windows 95 for OVER four years now (you do the math) and that's how he has ALWAYS done it. He'd never had a problem like this with his old computer. It took everything I had to explain to the guy that his OLD computer was the one that was not working properly, and that THIS ONE was just fine. Another basketcase for the books. (By the way, for those of you who get Windows 97 calls, there's actually products out there that ADVERTISE that they're Windows 97 ready!!!)

First I must say that I thoroughly enjoy your site... brings back a lot of memories..

I use to work on a help desk for a small department on the local Navy base. One of our users (a regular caller to the help desk) was having problems when typing on his new laptop. It seems that he would be typing away and suddenly his typed characters would start showing up somewhere else in the document, not where he was typing. His cursor would just "jump" all over the page for no reason. Well I had never heard of such a thing before and could only guess that he had maybe picked up a virus. When a thorough virus scan yielded nothing, I asked him to bring the laptop to me and when I had a couple of minutes I would look at it, which he did. For two days I tried to find the problem with no luck... I couldn't reproduce the problem. I had a couple of the higher level techs look at it who also couldn't reproduce the problem. I called the user and explained this to him and asked that he come show me what is happening. I had the user sit down with the laptop and show me the problem to see if he could reproduce it. Sure enough, after only about one paragraph was typed, the cursor started jumping all over and he would be typing in the middle of his document. In the meantime, one of the techs had walked over and was watching all of this... after about 15 minutes, he figured out what was happening. He had to (very tactfully) explain to the user (a VIP) that he was causing the problem himself by letting his thumbs bump and slide across the touch pad. In the end, we ended up disabling the touch pad and locating a mouse he could attach and use... problem solved.

I think I just spoke to the most non-computer literate

person in history! I work for a medium-sized ISP in the

midwest and I thought I'd heard everything. This woman calls

the support line because her computer isn't setup to dial in.

Since my company sends out a CD that installs a browser,

and configures a Windows machine to dial in automatically,

I asked the lady if she received a copy of our CD. She said

"which one, the one that says 'Epson' on it." I told her "no,

the one that says [insert ISP here] on it." "Oh ... OK" she

replies. I told her to slide the CD into her CD-ROM and she

would be all set. "OK" she replies and disconnects.

Moments later she calls back: "I'm trying to put the CD into

this slot on the front of my computer but it won't fit. Could

that be possible?" No, I reply. She says "I don't know

where to put this CD." "Do you have a CD-ROM ma'am?" I

politely ask. "I don't know. I have this thing that says

24X on the front of it; is that it?" I reply "yes, just put

the CD in there and it will auto-run and set your computer

up to dial in." Then she asks "how do I open it?"

Oh my goodness! :)

I work for a company who do many things IT, but we include PC support for some of our clients.

One morning, we get a call from one client. One of their PC's can't get logged in to the network. After the normal 'end-user' checks like is it plugged in to the wall, what's the error message, etc.. I am forced to make the 25 minute journey to their site...

When I arrive I am shown to the PC, and I check the cabling at the PC end, check the Protocols and network clients are OK. I am baffled by the problem, until someone mentions that they had a few 'new' machines added to the network the other day, and that the cabling company had been in working. It was apparently after they had left that the problems began.

Having already spent too long with this client, I ask them for the keys to the Comms cabinet where the patch panel is located - upon checking I discovered that the cabling company had 'borrowed' the patch cable for this 'broken' PC and had forgotten to plug in a replacement.

After fitting a replacement cable the problem was resolved... (and the customer was charged for 4 man hours of work!)

Hello this is (a large ISP) how may I help you?

Customer: I am going to be getting a second phone line and I'd like you to activate it so that once i get it I can connect to your service.

Me: let me undertsand this, you already have our service and you want to use it on a different phone line, or do you mean you want it billed to a different phone line.

Customer: No I want to use your service on my second phone line that I am getting. I want you to activate it for me.

Me: I'm sorry but your phone company is responsible for making sure that your phone line is activated.

Customer: I don't understand, you are my internet provider, all I want to do is have you activate the phone line so that when I get it I can use your service on it.

Me: After half an hour of trying to explain to cust. that we do not have to do anything to her phone line for her to use it with our service and that as long as her phone line is hooked up properly by her phone company, it will work with our service, I finally gave up in despair.

The customer still did not grasp the concept after half an hour of trying to explain it in the simplest terms I could find.

I just couldn't believe that this customer was phoning her internet provider to activate her phone line. It's kind of liking Phoning Burger King and telling them you want them to deliver your Pizza Hut pizza. :)

this lady just had her motherboard replaced being we are her hardware service,but she must have loved the prformance of the system now becuse i get this call at three in the morning!i am sure the tech left about 6 so she must have been doing some heavy surfing untill three..anyhow she goes to shutdown for the night and i get the call where shes asking what this msdex(like dex the yellow pages of dos)i ask her to type exit and of course restarted into windows,went to start/shutdown and not much to my surprise where is the dot?

I have been working for a GLOBAL entertainment company for the past year. First when I started, I had two users that quickly became the favorite users of the office.

One day I got a call from one of them complaining that they couldn't print, and that many of her icons were missing from her desktop. They shared a printer between two of them using Microsoft Print Sharing, so after checking the obvious things, like cables and power, I decided to check their Network configurations.

For some reason, the user that had called me had ownership of the printer under her co-worker's name. That's when I realized that her Win95 desktop looked completely different from the last time I was at her desk. I checked her coworker's desktop, and it was the first user's desktop!

I asked what they had done since the last time the printer worked. She mentioned to me that she wanted to use the programs on her friend's system for when her friend goes on maternity leave, so they switched computers. The way that they switched computers? - They switched keyboards, mice and monitors.

The two users sit in the same cubicle, 3 feet apart. Why not just move to her chair when she leaves?

This is not a true story but i think it is fun

Customer enters the store, looking for a game:

S:Yes sir, we have this game in stock. Here it is.

Customer gives a good look at the box, then sees the minimum requirements for the game. Suddenly he asks the salesperson:

C:Oh gosh, I can't buy this game!

S:Why not, sir?

C:Because here it says: IBM/PC compatible. My computer is a Compaq Presario!

I work the graveyard shift and this guy called up just frantic...

Me:Thank you for calling Technical support how can I help you?

Customer: I CAN'T GET INTO DOS!!! I NEED MY DOS..(With lots of cursing in there)

Me: Ok sir I can help you When you say you can't get into DOS.. What happens when you try? Do you get an error message?

Customer: No! I go to Start shut down and choose the restart computer in MS DOS mode. Windows shuts down and my computer Goes Black with this blinking light.. And then NOTHING!!! I have to get into DOS tonight..

Me: Ok sir I understand.. Now when you are at that black screen..

Customer: you mean where it is locking?

Me: Yes Sir. Now at that screen tell me what you see.

Customer: All it says on my screen is C windows... I don't want windows I wanted DOS!

Me: ok sir lets try something can you type in CD\?

Customer: Yes...

Me: then hit enter and now do you see C:\) as the last line on your screen?

Customer: Yes.

Me: Sir that is DOS. You are now in DOS mode

Customer: oh I thought it would be more like windows.. Well since you got me here HOW Do I get Back to windows?? Hmmm?

Me: type in WIN then hit enter

Customer: Oh ok thanks

At that point he quickly hung up the phone..

This may not be the funniest but it gave us a chuckle all night long.

I'm not a offical tech person, but i know tons about computers to use and help others. One day my "Friend" invited me over because his computer didnt seem to be working. Being the only person in my class who knew more about computers then playing games, i decided to help. After asking him what was wrong, he told me that windows wouldnt start. This puzzled me for awile, so I asked him what he did before it ceased working. He said that it was "nothing out of the ordinary". After returning home, and wasting a few hours trying to work out the problem and making a boot disk and grabbing a copy of the win95 cd, I returned to his house and managed (somehow) to get into windows via safe mode after a long while.

After scouting around the windows explorer, I took a look through the various files and folders, i spotted a folder called windows2, under the main windows folder. When I asked him what this was, he told me that he was afraid he might delete the windows folder, so he copied all the files into another folder and put a "2" next to all of them to tell them to tell them apart from the real ones, as backup (For Example windows2.ini). But, he thought that he might as well put a "1" next to the ORIGINAL windows files, which in turn tossed the computer into complete turmoil. When I asked him why he did this he said "to make it neater".

I sometimes wonder why people with the common sense of a dead parrot even bother using computers.

I received the following email:

'Could you please send a list of websites that are available. We know a few, but realize there are a lot more out there we haven't looked at.

Thanks'

I work doing tech support for a fairly small ISP, and I get my share of funny calls, but this one was so cute I had to share it.

A customer of ours was having trouble connecting during evening hours. After ruling out over-crowded modems here and setting/hardware issues on her computer, I suggested she call her phone company to test for possible line noise.

She had an idea of her own. Because the problem was only happening between 6-11 PM each night, she thought she could fix the problem by changing her computer's clock. By switching PM to AM on her computer's clock, she thoughtshe could trick the computer into thinking it was morning, and therefore work just fine...

I have been working on computers for so long that my FIFO communications buffer has more memory than my first computer did...

At any rate, even after all of these years I can still learn a thing or two from users and their mistakes.

Did you know that a PCI card *will* fit in an ISA slot?

Or that if you break a VLB card in the right place, the ISA part (obviously) will fit into a 16 bit ISA slot, and the VLB extension fits nicely into a PCI slot? Perfect for upgrading your VLB 486 to a PCI/Pentium without having to buy new cards.

Did you know that, despite being keyed, you really *Can* force a keyed IDE cable upside down into a keyed slot? Or that if pushed hard enough, you can jam a standard 15 pin VGA connector from a monitor onto a video card upside down? Or into a 9 pin female serial port, for that matter?

Are you aware that you can fit, on average, about seven of those little plastic army men into a 3.5" floppy drive?

Don't ask how I know these things. Suffice it to say that users can be very very amusing at times.

We have a LAN system which we recently updated.

Mostly pentium MMX 200's,with a few 400,s to keep the top

shots happy.

I manage the system, but if there is a problem I can't solve

I look for some advice.

The system was working well till I got a call from a very

irate person.

Every few minutes there would be a load beep and everything

would freez for a few seconds including the mouse.

After a number of beter tech persons than myself puzzled

over this for the beter part af the day it was decided to

replace the mother board.

I decided to have one last look.

One of the small loose power plugs had got stuck in the

processor cooling fan so the CPU was overheating and

shutting down ...etc

Foxed quite a few tech,s there

This is a story from May of 98. I have tested this on NT, and it does work. Not sure the original source of the story, sorry!

A confusing command in Microsoft Corp.'s FrontPage 98 could cause users to delete their entire hard drive -- including the operating system -- although the company knows of only one person who's been affected so far.

[Only one person who was dumb enough to do this, and then call Microsoft, is what they mean]

[Frontpage is a program that helps you build HTML pages. One of the 'features' is that you can turn existing files (presumably excel spreadsheets and word docs) into html pages]

The problem occurs when people using the Web authoring tool create a disk-based Web page in a location that's not the default provided by Microsoft The FrontPage program allows users to create sample Web pages on their hard drives that are not connected to a server.

OK led to KO

The problem occurred when a user changed the default setting for a Web page he wanted to store on his hard drive. The user said he wanted to store the page on the C drive. The program then asked if the user wanted to convert the entire C drive to a Web page, and the user said "OK."

When the user then went to delete the Web page, the program erased the entire drive.

[You would think that he would notice when his 'Web site' included \windows \program files etc. I only WISH _I_ could have taken this call]

I work with a company that outsources internet tech

support to many ISP's. I got a call one night from one

of our southern clients. It was near the end of my shift

when I got a call from a guy wanting the names for his mail

servers. Now this guy had a deep voice and sounded all

grown up, but when I started to tell him the server names,

he interupted me with... "Hold on a sec, I just droped

my crayon"

I am not a techie, Just an AutoCAD draftsman. I only know enough obout the inner workings of a computer to be dangerous (that's why God created tech support!).

Lately our industry has become flooded with young guys who know everything there is to know about computers, but don't know jack%#*!$ about engineering.

I took great joy in laughing at their incompetence, 'til one afternoon I saw our 62 year-old senior draftsman attempting to measure the distance of a line on his screen by placing his old three-sided engineering scale on the screen. If I could just get the old guys to sit down with the young guys and have them teach each other what they know, I'd be a millionaire!!!

I recently started working for Microsoft Technical Support in the U.K. Things were okay for the first couple of weeks then the call volume started shooting through the roof.

The first guy I had on was a bit upset that he had to wait half an hour before getting through. conversation goeas as follows -

Me: Thank you for calling Windows 98 Customer Support, my name is Ian, what can I help you with?

Him: I've been waiting in this queue for ages, now I've paid for Support and you're going to help me! Now, my laptop keeps booting into Safe Mode.

Me: Ok then, try rebooting the machine, hold down the CTRL key and select "Normal" at the startup menu.

Him: O.K. (sounds of PC booting up, keys clicking and finally the Windows startup sound, I breathe a sigh of relief) Nope, it's still in Safe Mode.

Me: (slightly confused because I distinctly heard the startup sound) Does it say safe mode round the edge of the screen.

Him: No, but it is in safe mode because all the icons are huge and there's only sixteen colors.

Someone had resized his desktop.

Support: Hello Help Desk

User : Hello My keyboard is doing funny things.

Support : Describe what is appearing.

User : lots of Zeros and funny characters.

Support : Please type Zero and see if the key is stuck down.

User : The key is not stuck, now more funny characters.

Support : I will arrange replacement of your keyboard, as it sound as if its faulty.

A while latter I went and replaced the users keyboard and all was well, as I left the users office.....

User : "Would liquid damage a key board ?" (Innocent smile)

Support : " Yes, are you trying to admit to something?"

User : "No, Just asking"

Support : "Are you sure ?"

User : "Yes"

As I walked back to our equipment storage area, water poured out of the keyboard and down my suit trousers.!!!!!!:)

The user later, faced with the evidence, admitted to spilling a whole glass of water on the keyboard !!!!!!

I work for tech. support for a local internet provider. We had a potential customer call wanting to know how to signup. I asked the lady she had our CD, which was availible at several locations around the city, and she replied with a resounding, "Yes, but I'm having trouble using it." I asked the usual system questions: What OS? What Brand?

(smacks forehead) " Do you have a CD-ROM? "

"Yes I do."

"Place the CD in the drive, and tell me if it starts up automatically."

"I put it in but nothing's happening."

Hmmm... Problem with CD?

"Take the CD out and tell me if it is scratched."

"No sir, its smooth and shiny. I have a quick question."

"Sure."

....

"Does the shiny side go up, or down?"

Needless to say, after putting her on hold and laughing until I couldn't breathe. I was able to sign her up as a customer. I shared my story with my fellow tech supporters and enjoyed another round of laughing.

>From a while back, when Netscape has just been released...

me: Hello Tech Support

donkey: I can't get this Mosaic to print.

me: What message do you get? (knowing what's coming next)

donkey: It says that the function is not implemented.

me: Well, it's not printing because the function is not implemented..... If you want to print web pages you'll have to download Netscape.

donkey: ok - I know how to do that.

me: Ok, bye

About an hour later......

me: Hello tech support

donkey: I've downloaded Netscape & Mosaic still won't print.

me: (!) You've got to use Netscape instead of Mosaic.

donkey: (long pause) EEEEYYYYOOOORRRRR

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

Honestly - he made a donkey noise & hung up!

I work for my university's computing department, and we

handle tech support for most of the university. Our dorms

all have 10-base-T ethernet ports for the students to use.

As our modem pool is overtaxed by faculty/staff and off-

campus students dialing in, we strongly encourage dorm

students to purchase ethernet cards for their computers.

One day, I was sitting at the walk-in desk for our tech

support office, and this really "Billy-Bob" looking fellow

walked in with an angry expression on his face, and a badly

maimed ethernet cable in his hand. He told me that he was

not able to get onto the internet, and so I asked him to

explain exactly what was happening:

"Well, this here &*$%! modem cable wouldn't fit in the phone

jack, so I decided to whittle it down so it would fit, and

now it still don't work!" (holding up the ethernet cable

for me to inspect)

I called my supervisor over to help him, because I had to

run somewhere...anywhere, before I exploded with laughter.

Desc: NOISE COMING FROM TERMINAL USER NEEDS SOMEONE TO COME AND CHECK IT OUT

This help desk call originally came to me on an extremely busy day. After making contact with the user, they advised that the PC was still functioning but that it would make a loud noise intermittently. I asked the user to shut off the PC, and she said it WAS off, but was still intermittently making this terrible noise. I asked the user to shut off the monitor, and she said that was off too, and insisted the PC was still making this noise. She described the noise as a rumbling sound that lasted for about 10 seconds at a time. I had her unplug everything in her office, all stereo speakers, lamps, etc. She did so, and still heard this noise! I told the user that I would check it ASAP. I was not able to make it to the PC that day but did so the following morning. The PC was fine and quiet. The user said "Have a seat and you will hear it soon." About 5 minutes later, a loud grumbling noise emitted from the area of the PC and/or desk. I was blown away! When everything is unplugged, this shouldn't be happening! I told the user I would have to stop back after checking whether or not the PC was under warranty. The noise was of the type that I had never heard come from a PC before. I found out from another tech that the user had called the help desk the prior night claiming that the PC made the noise even when powered down....That's when I recognized the noise...I called the user (a new employee) and asked if they had a pager, "Yes, my new pager has been in my desk all week. You know I never hear that thing go off?" I told her to take it off vibrate mode, and closed the help desk ticket.

I had been an escalation support tech for only a few weeks when I got referred to a user that could not get her CD_Rom drive to work on her whiz-bang new Micron. The previous calls showed she had been shipped 2 new cd-rom drives, and had them installed correctly by our onsite service contractors.... Well, her 2nd replacement drive was still not working. After verifying the power and cable connections over the phone. I went throuhg all ov the regular System properties and device manager trouble shooting with her, and came to the conclusion that the 3rd drive was in fact bad too. I was about to RMA her 3rd drive and have her on the phone when the new one arrived to verify the installation with our onsite service....

I put her on hold to see if I could coordinate with the onsite people for a concurrent phone call while they did the install, and had an epiphany remembering one of her comments to me .." I haven't had any new electronics in the house since my late husband's record player " I immediately got back on the phone with her and the cd worked just fine, when we put the CDs in the drive shiny side down !

I've been working in the tech support for over a year now,

but the funniest thing I've come across personally happened

at home.

My wife is the type of person who doesn't understand the

difference between doing work on computers (logging calls,

which I do 10 hours a day) and playing on computers (blowing

stuff up, thus reducing my urge to throttle her). This has

on many occasions led to arguments about the use of the

computer.

One day, totally fed up with the situation, my wife shut

down the computer, removed and hid the power cord as a

disciplinary measure.

Two can play that game.

My lovely wife, who can use a mouse but can only barely use

a word processor, found that she couldn't get into windows.

I had added a password to her profile. (What she didn't

know was that she could still get into windows by clicking

cancel...)

I don't think she's going to play that game again. Fun part

is that I showed her how I did it, but if she tries it on me

I can still get in and delete those pesky pdf files...(bwahahahahah!)

I work as a computer service technician/lan administrator for a university in Seattle. I don't normally have a lot of interaction with people - I'm usually just told that a computer's broken, go fix it. Anyway, one day the head of my department brings his laptop to me and complains that his floppy drive isn't working and that he needs the files on it for a meeting that afternoon. I didn't have time immediately to look at it, so I handed it off to my co-workers, who proceeded to check everything from system settings in Windows to the BIOS, to downloading special driver packs off the internet to try to fix it. I finally got around to it about an hour later when they've run out of ideas. I took one look at it, gave a gentle push on the floppy drive until I heard it click into place, booted up the machine and handed it back to my boss.

Of course, when my co-workers asked me what I did, I gave them a bunch of technobabble - they never found out. ;)

Supporting an ISP gives me the oppertunity to hear funny stories every day. Two weeks ago I ran into one that blew my mind. A client was sending file attachments to her friend, she could not figure out why her friend was not reciving the attachment. I sat with the client as she tried to send the email.

1. Compose new message.

2. Type in the email address and subject.

Now when it comes to step 3, which was select which files....I told the client to select the files, when she would do this I could hear the cd-rom drive opening and closing. I asked the client what she was doing. She replied and said she was trying to send her friend this cd.

The client honestly believed by placing the cd in the cd-rom drive, composing a new message, and clicking on send, she would send her friend the ENTIRE CD. Not just the files on the cd, but the entire DISC!!!

The client explained that after clicking on the send button she would open the cd-rom drive and that dad-gum cd was still there......EVERYTIME!!!

:)

Howdy, I work for the largest computer distributor in the world. I work on mainly Hewlett Packard and Compaq servers and workstations doing pre- and post sales tech support for the resellers who buy from us. Most of the time all we do is find the right memory for a system but quite often we will do a complete server config for one of our customers who do not understand how servers work. Several months ago I received a call from a reseller who was looking for an HP cluster solution (clustering is Microsoft's fault tolerant server solution, somewhat complicated) but didn't have a clue as to what hardware was required.

I made some assumptions and put together, at the time, one of the low end cluster solutions: 2 Netserver LHIIs, each with dual p2-266s, 512mb of ram, with 8gb or RAID5 storage between them, as well as everything else required for clustering. 40 or so separate items in all and this would have cost somewhere in the range of $20,000 or so (this was a small cluster).

Imagine my surprise when, after working for 20 minutes finding the right part numbers for this woman to order, she starts laying into me: "I don't need all of this! This is way too expensive!"

"Well, you need..."

"I'll tell you what I need, I don't need these 'scusy' drives, ide is fine."

"Um."

"And I only need 8gb total, why do I have to order 9 of these 4gb drives?"

"That's..."

"And I don't need these servers or this RAID stuff. And I don't know why you gave me 4 nics, I only need 1 for the network."

"Er..."

"And I don't need these LHIIs, all I need is a couple of workstations."

"Ma'am! You need all of these items for clustering!"

"Oh, all I need is to share some data between two PCs."

It was then that my head exploded.

It was 1997 and I was looking for a job in the computing industry. I was looking through my local paper in the Help Wanted section, and noticed an ad for a secretary... the ad requested "At least five years' experience with Windows 95." Did I mention it was 1997?

Okay, I've taken some strange calls before, but I laughed

Me: Thank you for calling -------, may I help you?

User: Yes, my brother-in-law just informed me that my system is a FAT32 file system. I don't know who programed that into my computer but I want them to come change it to THIN32!!!!!!

The user kept going on and on and would not believe me that it could not be changed to say "thin"

Some people!!!!

I work as a technical support consultant at my isp anyway

it was business as usual with the normal calls cant connect,

can't get my mail,etc then i answered the phone thank you for

calling yada yada yada the lady on the phone said i can't

get connected i figured ok i said please open up my computer

and then open up dial up networking she said how i said left click

using the mouse she said the mouse? i said yes the mouse then she

said oh you mean the part i talk into.

excuse me?

My job is setting people's internet accounts. I go to they're houses, fix their internet preferences, Windows, etc. Usually after a week or so, I usually get a call to fix something with the internet, so I go; but this one was really pathetic.

I get this call from the teenager girl, that the internet doesn't work. So I go to their house, and try to figure it out:

ME: So what's the problem?

SHE: Well, I connect to the internet, the password goes alright, it says "connected", but when I try to surf, it says "not connected".

ME: Hmmm.. sounds awkward. Show me what you do?

SHE: Sure.

So she opens the connection icon, types her password in, and clicks "Connect". Strangely enough the connection goes alright, and soon we get the familiar window "Connected for so and so minutes".

ME: Well, we're connected! What's the problem?

SHE: I'll close this thing up and I'll start the browser.

And she clicks on the "Disconnect" button.

How user-friendly can a program be??

A user called to say that the file she had created was being over written by a previous file. I confirmed that the file she had just created was on the Server and that it had the correct data in it. Five minutes later she called back to say that the data had been changed back to the old data. I had her re-run the program and checked that the data was again correct. A short time later she called to say that the data was again the previous file. This went on for several hours. After a long conversation with her, I found that she was attempting to download the file to her PC, but the option she was selecting was to upload. This caused her to overwrite the good file with the file from her PC. No wonder she could not figure out what the problem was. She had no idea what the difference was between her PC and the UNIX Server.

I've been a Programmer Analyst for 10 years now, but that

doesn't necessarily mean that I know computers all that

well. Just ask my husband. ("AGH! DON'T JUST TURN OFF

THE PC! YOU HAVE TO SHUT DOWN WINDOWS!". "I do?".)

Anyway ... I recently got an IBM Thinkpad through work.

It comes with a CD ROM drive, and I knew enough to know

that I could play audio CDs on it if I chose. I didn't

want to do that at work, though, because it would bother

people around me, and I didn't have any headphones.

"Use mine," the nice lady sitting opposite me offered.

Great! I found the jack, plugged them in, slipped them on,

and cranked up some AC/DC. "I'M ON A HIIIIIGHWAYYYY TO

HELLLLLL ...". Just then, the nice lady gently tapped me on

the shoulder to get my attention. "Uh, Vicky? The whole

office can hear you. You've got the headphones plugged into

the wrong jack." "Huh?". I checked, and found that the

headphone jack is right next to the microphone/line-in jack

on the Thinkpad. Both, it seemed, will accept the headphone

cord just fine. Only one, however, will prevent the office

from learning my musical tastes.

Hmph. All I can say is, if I'm not supposed to plug

something in there, it shouldn't fit in the first place!

One day, I was doing my tech duties for this accounting

software company. I received a call and since the user's

was receiving multiple errors, I asked her if she could send

me a copy of her data. She agreed and told me that she knew

where and how to send me the diskette.

Fifteen minutes later, I received a fax of the diskette and the

following note:

"Dear Mike, thanks for all your help. Here's the disk that

you requested and hope that you can have some luck and resolve

my problem."

Needless to say, the diskette that she put in the fax was damaged.

The bad thing was, that disk was the original!

Sorry this is long, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

My husband & I (we're both computer professionals) went to

Utah last November for his brother's wedding. He asked us

to do a couple of routine things (install a program, setup

his dial-up networking, blah blah) for him while he was on

his honeymoon in exchange for letting us stay there, so we

agreed.

We got everything working beautifully, then left the

computer on while we stepped out for some dinner. When we

returned I noticed that the screen saver had locked up so

I rebooted. For some reason it did not detect the keyboard,

so I shut it off, checked the back, & rebooted. Same error.

Shut down, double-check the back, reboot. Different error.

Can't find the mouse. Shut down, double-check the back,

reboot. Different error. Can't find the RAM (uh-oh).

My husband decides to open the case. Let me first explain

that it was a Packard Hell mini-tower with a 2-piece

motherboard that connects in an upside-down T. The RAM &

cables are on one side, while the cards are on the other.

We both look around inside and nothing seems out of place.

We make sure everything's seated correctly and plugged in.

We even turned it upside-down and shook it vigorously to

see if anything like a loose screw would fall out. Nothing.

With a sigh of frustration, my husband sat it on the kitchen

counter and stared at it. That's when he noticed a long thin

brown thing sticking out of the cables. We looked at each

other & realized that we had found the mouse problem his

brother had been complaining about.

It seems that every fall, mice in Utah migrate indoors.

While we were out eating dinner, one had crawled in through

an open slot in the back and peed on the motherboard right

where you plug in the mouse & keyboard. Then when we started

moving the case around, he hid under the cables and held on

to the RAM with his claws. I just wish I could have seen it

when my 6'4" husband chased the mouse down the street with a

sledgehammer!

A while back I took my MBA degree. The University

provided the MBAs with a small room with 8 PCs for writing

papers.

There was a girl, "Alice", who always got in before

everyone else, and she had a maddening habit of

commandeering several PCs for her personal use and then

going off somewhere - coffee, breakfast, class, whatever.

The idea of having more than one Word document open at one

time on the same PC didn't occur to her - if she had three

papers to work on, by golly, she needed three PCs.

One day someone came in to use a PC, found they were all

in use, and discovered that "Alice" was using several of

them as usual. Also as usual she'd left all of her

documents open and gone for lunch. He checked out one

of her documents, noted its due date (that day), and noted

its subject matter.

He then quietly issued a Find/Replace command to replace

all occurrences of the word "bank" with "penis".

The subject of the paper? "The Royal Bank of Canada".

I never did hear if she handed in her paper that way. But

she never used more than one PC again.

Tech: Ok, just do *70 just before the server's phone number, this disable your call waiting

Cu: Right now?

Tech: Yep!

Cu: (beep! beep! beep!)

Yes, that will fix everything!

I work for a newly public ISP based in Texas and i get my fair share

of people with no clue, like the guy who called to complain the software

we sent him didn't work and came to discover (after about 10 mins) that he had

put it in UPSIDE DOWN, but this one had to take the cake. Me and one of my

fellow tech supporters were sharing stories when told me of a call he had.

She called up about a problem she was having and after the standard troubleshooting

questions he decided to check her settings, since she had Windows 95 he asked

her to put the mouse cursor on the My Computer icon, he then heard a clunk

sound and had relized she had physically picked up the mouse and put it on the

moniter

I do not work in tech support for my daily bread but, because I have been 'into' computers since the mid-80s, I am often the first person fellow workers, relatives and neighbours turn to with their problems. This 'phone call happened within the last hour.

R: "Hi Al, I'm having a problem with my printer. It works fine with the black cartridge but as soon as I put the colour one in it refuses to print. I've reinstalled the printer several times, but it doesn't help. Do you think the driver could be corrupt?"

Me: "Rick, put the black cartridge in and print a test-page"

R: "I did that Al, it works fine"

Me: "Now put the colour cartridge in - do you see anything different on the printer?"

R: "Yes, the power light and a little red light are flashing - it was doing this before"

Me: "Is there anything written by the red light?"

R: "Yes it says 'Ink'"

Me: "Rick, when did you last replace the colour cartridge?"

R: "Thanks Al - good night!"

I've been a tech supporter for some years myself, but this one I contacted was ... aargh!

Someone I know has an account at a local ISP. His daughter has an account with Hotmail. The problem was that the father didn't receive the e-mail his daughter sent. First I tried the website of the ISP but the only thing useful on it was the telephone number of the tech support (I thought…)

Hi, this is (ISP) Helpdesk

Hi, this is Olaf Schulte, I have a question. Is it possible that your mailserver rejects mail from Hotmail? I have this problem that someone with an account at your ISP doesn’t receive Hotmail e-mail.

No, no, that has nothing to do with our mailserver. Hotmail uses the w-o-r-l-d w-i-d-e w-e-b, so that has nothing to do with our mailserver.

Yes, but that is not what I asked …

(interrupting rudely) It is too what you asked!

(patiently) No, what I mean is this: Someone has an account with you. Someone else has an account with Hotmail. The e-mail sent from Hotmail to the account at your ISP –so to your mailserver– never arrives. So when he calls to your mailserver the e-mail never arrived. Is it possible that your mailserver rejects e-mail from Hotmail?

No, as I said earlier, Hotmail uses WWW and not a mailserver (he’s still not getting it!). So our mailserver has no influence on it. But on the other hand … if someone from Hotmail would send an e-mail to someone at our ISP and it wouldn’t arrive, THEN it could be something with our mailserver …

THAT is what I asked in the first place!!!

(interrupting VERY rudely) NO THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU ASKED!!!

The next sound was a very loud bang at my side, when I slammed the phone on the hook.

See there’s some amount of rudeness I can handle (I too have a bad day sometimes…). But this man … he just jumped to conclusions and never really listened to what I said. And then blames me (did I mention he did that in a very rude manner?) for not listening to my real problem.

You may not want to realize it, but some of us just don’t listen to what the customer says!

helpdesk: HelpDesk, how may I help you?

user: I can't find my Word icon anymore.

helpdesk: What operating system do you have?

user: Operating system?

helpdesk: Do you have a "start button" at the lower left

corner?

user: *thinking* ... No, I have an IBM. The _start_ button is to the right.

As the senior(time in service not age) tech at my company I have access to all the machines in my office I decided that for April fools day My boss needed a good scare. I found a program that when run will ask you three different ways if you want to format your C: drive leaving no other options. My boss being a mac man was on the verge of tears when i came in.

Boss: (secritary's name)'s computer has an error.

me: really?(snicker, chortle) What kind of error?

Boss: when i started it up after i logged into the network I got this screen telling me to format my drive.

me: what did you do?

Boss: I shut it off right away so you could fix it.

me: (at this point i'm in dos and moving the fe.exe file from the startup menu)(reset)(run through scandisk)(starts no prob.)It was doing what now?

I think he thinks he's insane.

I'm the resident PC Tech and Network guru for a small firm that supports, hmmm, a sales staff in need of HELP!

I got a call from a salesman who says "I lost it! I lost it all! My proposals, my contacts, I lost it all, and I want you to get it back!". So I go over to his desk to hear his story.

He uses Microsoft Outlook, and of course, it comes with INBOX, OUTBOX, and DELETED ITEMS. I listen and he tells me "My work just disappeared. I had it in a folder and it's gone".

I look in the INBOX. Nothing.

I look in OUTBOX. Nothing.

I look in DELETED ITEMS. Nothing.

I then ask him "Which folder did you put your work in? I see you didn't create any folders".

He then says "You mean I can create my own folders?" and I say yes, he could. After being in shock for 3 mins, he rants again saying "It doesn't matter. It'll just disappear again!". So I just HAD to ask.

I said "Um, which folder DID you place them in?".

He tells me "Deleted Items folder, but I don't get it. It was there for 2 months! How come it's gone today?!?!".

Before I could say another word, I decide to check his PROPERTIES on the DELETED ITEMS folder.

Aha ha ha ha.

Sure enough. Mail in Deleted Items is removed after 2 months. Oh God, how do I tell him he's toast????

Moral of the story - put NOTHING in trash that you want later on! After all, you wouldn't use a wastebasket to hold your tennis bracelet, even though the janitor visits you every two months!!!

I am not a tech, thank goodness, but I am a computer science major, so I've seen some good stuff.

This is my favorite of all the "problems" I have fixed.

I have a friend who is less than computer literate(doesn't everybody?), well, he is connected to the Internet and has told me about a funny printing error he is getting.

I'm not really all that curious, because I hear this kind of stuff all day from other people. But, this is my friend.

It seems that the text is blocking out when he prints from a web site, but not when he is off-line. I tried it my self and checked all the settings and the printer physically. Knowing his computer was fairly new, I asked if the printer was new too. No, it was his old one. I asked how old, he looked at me and said he had had it since 1990. I knew immediately what was wrong, and asked him if he had updated the driver."Driver, what is that?" I didn't bother to explain and just downloaded it and "fixed" his printer.

Can you imagine, trying to use an eight year old driver with Windows 98.

i was working with a verifier yesterday, she couldn't get her files to import,i checked and sure enough it was not importing,i checked it with my software all was good, i had to delete the files, projects & credits, this was a long job since she couldn't find the windows explorer,and she didn't have a windows key, " win key + e= explorer, once we found our way to the windows explorer she said i am not in the right place it says exploring c,once i explained to her this is where i wanted her to be, she can't find the dialer folder.

it's abcd all in order we only need the one that says " dialer"

ok, i see it, now double click it " she can't see it on the left side of the screen, no + next to c, can't see a c: only see my computer.

ok, click the dialer folder 1 time then hit enter, i can't see enter where is this at?

ok, on the keyboard, see the enter key?

oh yes, she said i see it, ok, i need to find 3 files, one is main.dbf, do you see this?

no

are you sure,it's all in order.

no i don't have it.

read to me everything you see

i see aol

no, click on the dialer folder

ok, i see mail delete this?

no!!

i need the main.dbf

oh, well i see something .dbf delete this??

no, after a long time we get the files deleted, i had to go through dos.

she insisted she didn't have msdos prompt

she said her husband didn't need it anymore so he deleted it.

yikes

ok, now you need to try to receive files again, click on receive files, i will hang up so you can get them.

i call her back after she logs off.

read me what you are seeing

well it said not importing

ok, lets go back to msdos prompt

wait she said let me click the - at the top to close the program

the minus at the top? what do you see at the bottome of the screen?

well i see a whole bunch of dialers and winmenus.

oh, i see

did you know that in order to exit you must click on the x

or even better at the bottom, our company put a exit button

so you can exit easy out of your work.

yikes :)

i needed a drink after that call

I work for a telecomunications company. I received a call from one of our customers recently.

Tech: Welcome...

Cust: I can't connect to this number

Tech: What seems to be the problem?

Cust: It's constantly busy

Tech: How long has this been happening?

Cust: Just in the last half hour

Tech: Have you tried any other providers?

Cust: Yes I have and it's constantly busy for them too!

I don't know about you but for me I thought they might just twig to the fact that the person may actually have a life and be on the phone!

I work on help desk for a major computer company. When the technicians are stumped....they call me. Last month I recieved the dumbest call I have ever heard.

A Technician called me, on helpdesk, needing help with a call. The customer they were speaking with was having troubles with her keyboard. When she would type it was always TYPING IN ALL CAPS. The only way the client could get the keyboard to respond normally was to HOLD DOWN the SHIFT key!! Then the keyboard would type correctly.

Now the bad part is not that the client called in for this issue. The bad part is the fact that the technician could not resolve the issue by himself, so he called me for help.

STRANGE! :P)

One of our buildings had been struck by lightning and a

massive electrical surge blew out the majority of the

buildings wiring. The following morning I got a call from

a user stating, "I just arrived at the office and my

computer is on fire. Does that mean I should not try to

turn it on?"

So I'm sitting here in the computer lab, minding my own business, reading Tech Tales, and the guy next to me leans over to me.

"Hey, this computer keeps eating my words."

Double-take. "It's doing what?"

"Well, I was trying to delete some stuff, and now whenever I try to type something it's eating the letters."

I look over, and at the bottom of the screen on the status bar is the word "Typeover". I pressed the "Insert" key for him, and went back to Tech Tales.

:)

We received an unexpected UPS overnight package from one of our overseas offices. The thing was huge, maybe 24 inches square. A note resting on top of the mass of packing peanuts explained that the guy was having problems with his floppy "holder" since he stepped on it, and could we please fix it and return it.

Turns out the guy had an HP Omnibook laptop and an external floppy DRIVE that he stepped on. No like everything to do with a laptop (let alone . . . ahem . .HP) these things are like $200 each - and our company is real cheap when it comes to buying replacement parts. I examined the thing and sure enough it was squashed in the center, the opening nearly closed. I grabbed a large straight screwdriver and stuck it in the opening and pried the thing so it was straight.

I hooked it up to my laptop and was surprised that it worked just fine.

The customer got his floppy "holder" back the next day in working order.

Another tech brings in a PC that he is having trouble with. The PC is a users home machine but he occasionally writes a report or two on it so we stretch the rules and work on this non-business PC.

The thing is brand new and worked great for a few days then the floppy drive stopped working. You put a disk in and the thing made a few normal floppy drive sounding sounds and then just wouldn't work. I tried different floppies and all of the did the same thing. I finally slide the disk cover back and looked at the media and was surprised to find a smeary streak across the disk. Grabbing a flash light I peeked into the hole, sure enough there was something foreign in the drive. I had to take the case apart and remove the drive and even remove part of it's covering to find a peanut jammed into the drive.

Seems that the users little one liked to eat peanuts while playing PC games. Don't know how the peanut made the jump from the can to the floppy drive.

You know what it's like when someone just doesn't tell you all the facts?

One day, I was helping one of our corporate heads on the phone with a question. He displayed a little knowledge of computers (he knew / from \, etc.)but when we were ready to hang up he asked for help with one more problem.

"Sure, what is it?"

"Well, Sam (not his real name) sent me a disk for my new laptop. It's for Office 97. I want to have the toolbar again like on the last one."

Usually, when these laptops roll out, they are preconfigured by Sam with whatever tools are necessary for the recipient. This was not to be the case.

So, I walk him through the process of adding the toolbar's icon to the Startup folder, only to find it doesn't exist on the hard drive. I have him check for a few other files, and pretty soon it's apparent that Office is not installed. However, during the course of the conversation, he gets a stubborn determination that it MUST be there, just in another location. Then he gets sidetracked completely, and decides his .CAB files in the \windows\options folder must be bad, and starts replacing them with those from a CD (which, incidentally, are from an older version of Windows than he has on the new laptop) and it takes a lot of effort to convince him that that has nothing to do with Office, and even longer to get the right CD and replace those .CAB files again.

So he says he wants to install Office from the CD. He puts his "Office" CD in the drive, and it doesn't Autorun. I have him search for a Setup file on the CD. It has one. I ask him to run it and read carefully what it says before proceeding, figuring I can back him out if it's not the correct program. He follows the first half of my instructions. He kept clicking OK or Next (he wasn't reading the messages to me) until eventually it gave a fatal stop message and informed him that the SERVICE PACK 1 could not install, because it couldn't find a valid Office installation...

I asked him to read the CD. He tells me it's for Office 97. I asked him if it said anything about a Service pack, and he confirmed it had Service packs 1 and 2. I told him to send the laptop back to Sam, or get a new CD. I couldn't help him until then...

48 minutes to get nowhere at all.

tech: Please put your AT&T Worldnet CD in to the CD-ROM drive..

customer:ok....now my AOL screen is coming up

tech: AOL Screen? did you put your AT&T CD in?

customer: Is it the one that says AT&T Worldnet setup?

tech: YES

customer: I think there is a problem with my local access number. everytime I call it I get a fax noise....how can I get technical support if I only get a fax noise?

(customoer is dialing number from computer where it says "number to dial".customer thinks that this is OUR customer service number and does not realize that that is the number that the modem uses to connect...)

tech:(mutes phone and laughs hysterically)The number you dialed is a local access number for your computer. the number you are talking to me on is the number for technical support. you are getting that "fax noise" because our modem is trying to communicate to you, since they have their own language.

customer:oh!...(then the call goes on for eternity)

They hired a royal boob to take over the CNC programming after the last guy "Terry" quite and left in a huff. The new guy had worked out in the shop and barely new his way around a PC, let alone how to program CNC.

After every failure of his CNC programs to cut parts correctly he would usually blame "Terry" and claim that he wrote and left a virus on his machine. After scanning the machine with a least 3 different virus scanners and trying to convince him that a virus would not infect a CNC program (which is basically an ASCII file with a list of CNC commands to send to a cutting machine to tell it where to cut) I gave up short of telling him that he was just inept and couldn't write a CNC program if his life depended on it. That night before I left I cooked up a scheme

I wrote a batch file and called it in his autoexec.bat. It popped up a text screen stating that ". . the new virus detection program found a virus named "Terry's Revenge" at hex offset . . " and had a 2 page list of totally bogus hex information. After a pause and a prompt to "Press any key to eliminate the virus" I had it copy a 20 meg file back and for the a few dozen times to make it grind the disk a little. Next the batch file reported that it "Cannot delete Terry's Revenge from the hard disk, press any key to continue", next popped up a small timed dialog for about 2 seconds that stated "The hard disk will now be formatted" I then had it print out a fake formatting prompt with the machine copying the big file back and forth again. The final step was a "Press any key to reinstall Windows and view results", a big GOTCHA! Screen popped up after this and with another key press the machine continued to boot as normal. I told a few people about it and we were all anxious for the next morning.

The guy cam in (a bit earlier than me) and started his machine. He got all the way to the last screen ("Press any key to reinstall Windows and view results") and would not go any further, he wanted to wait till I got in to prove to me that he really DID have a virus. He phoned a few people and let them know too, insisting that they come up front to the office to actually view the screen. A few actually did and all but kept from choking as they bit their tongues to keep from laughing. I strolled in late and he came up to me practically in tears as the realization that he had just "lost" all his work as well as programs set in. It took a couple of times of me insisting that he press a key to get him to do it. After doing it his jaw dropped to the floor. Through gritted teeth he let me know what he thought of my "joke".

Funny, never got a complaint of a "virus" again from the guy. Sometimes it feels sooooo good to be on the other end of the stick :)

I used to work at Radio Shack (Grrr), anyway, one day one of the other stores faxed the following story to all of the other stores in the area, commenting at the bottom that the customer in this story was what we typically had to deal with:

The technician used to work in a computer store and one day he had a gentleman call in with a smoking power supply. the service representative was having a bit of trouble convincing this guy that he had a hardware problem.

Tech: Sir, something has burned within your power supply

Customer: I bet that there is some command that I can put into the AUTOEXEC.BAT file that will take care of this.

Tech: There is nothing that software can do to help you with this problem.

Customer: I know that htere is something I can put in... Some command... maybe it should go into the CONFIG.SYS or the WIN.INI

* After a few minutes of going round and round *

Tech: Okay, I am not supposed to tell anyone this but there is a hidden command in some versions of DOS that you can use. I want you to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT and add the last line as C:\DOS\NOSMOKE.EXE and reboot your computer.

* Customer does this *

Customer: It is still smoking

Tech: I guess you'll need to call Microsoft and ask them for a patch for the NOSMOKE.EXE

* The customer than hung up, we thought we had heard the last of this guy, but NO, he calls back four hours later...*

Tech: Hello, Sir, how is your computer?

Customer: I called Microsoft and they said that my power supply is incompatible with their NOSMOKE.EXE and that I need to get a new one. I was wondering when I can have that done and how much it will cost...

Moral of the Story: Microsoft can be your friend...on occasion.

Being tech support is bad. Being tech support without title, equipment, or salary is worse. But that's what I do at a small (1 building) college in New York City. When something goes wrong in our four machine computer room, my job is not to fix it, but to work around.

So I got a "call" (more like a yell down the hall) about a problem. Seems the user had written a paper on a computer with no network connection (so no printing) and no floppy drive. Basically, no connection with the outside world. So, thinking quick I run and get my Zip drive, do one of our 10 minute NT reboots and copy the file. Bring the Zip over to another machine, which also has no floppy drive, but has the network. Try to print; no luck. Not the printer's fault, cause someone else had just printed out 50 copies of her CV, so that wasn't the problem. (And yes, I checked for paper) But as I said, mine is not to fix. So I send the file over the internet (using a webmail account: Network drive? What's that?) to the third machine in the room. Bring it down and try to print. This one can't talk to the printer either! But, it has a floppy drive. Put the doc on a floppy, bring it over to the last machine in the room, and, 75 minutes in, success.

The file was, as my friend said later, like Steve Martin in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, taking each step of the journey on a different busted medium. The moral of the story: It's bad enough to deal with stupid users. Dealing with stupid users on stupid machines really hurts.

I used to work as a computer salesperson for (Major Canadian electronics retail chain) and I used to hear the most moronic things coming from customers.

The best was the customer who wanted to buy a computer, two keyboards and two monitors, with a Y adaptor for the VGA card and keyboard (this was in the Win 3.1 days...)

Fearing the worst, I asked why. He explained that that way him and his secretary could both work on the same computer. At the same time. As in, he'd be able to work on Word at his desk while his secretary did some work on FoxPro. Save a bit of cash, eh.

I tried explaining that Win 3.1 is NOT a mainframe type of thing where you can have multiple dumb terminals logging on to the same machine, but he was convinced that me telling him he needed two computers for that kind of OS was me cheating him. He couldn't see why a 486SX with 4 meg of RAM couldn't allow two users to use completely different programs (with different desktops) etc by plugging Y adaptors into the keyboard and modem ports.

I used to work as a salesperson for a large Canadian electronics retail chain. I was the only bilingual salesperson there, so I tended to get the bulk of the business from those who spoke only French.

Coming out of left field was an annoyed customer who couldn't get his computer to work. He spoke only French, and could I help him? I said sure, wondering who in hell managed to sell this computer in the first place. Did they use sign language? I couldn't imagine selling a technical device like a computer to someone without being able to communicate...

I sussed it out straight away. The gentleman in question was African in origin and spoke French with a **very** heavy African accent which required a far superior knowledge of French to understand than the rudiments that the dishwasher salesman who helped this guy out on my day off possessed.

In essence, the home appliances guy knew just enough French to nod and say "yes, yes" and that had been enough to sell this thing.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I merely point out his ethnicity to make the point that even I had to ask him to repeat himself often (and French is my first language) because of the unusual cadence, word usage, and accent. I am not doing so to slander ANYONE of African origin.

His complaint was that his computer "didn't work". He couldn't explain why or how. So I suggested that maybe he could have brought his computer in, which hadn't occurred to him. So there he was, not willing to explain what was wrong, but not willing to leave and bring his computer in.

This was a half hour discussion; me trying furiously to hear French words through the veil of his accent, and him trying to figure out how to express why it "just didn't work" in as many different ways as possible without giving any further details.

So in frustration, I asked "which one of these did you buy?". Sure enough, it was a bare bones clone 486SX (designed so that they could publish a low price, then upsell the customer to a better machine when they got in) that didn't even have DOS, just COMMAND.COM. So I say, fair enough, what is it doing? And so he starts typing a letter. And of course, every time he hits RETURN, it comes back with the standard "what the hell are you trying to type" DOS error. "You see, this one doesn't work either. What are you selling, here, exactly?"

So I explain to him the magical world of software. But first, I explain, he may actually want to obtain an operating system, first. He fishes in his wallet for a TEN DOLLAR BILL (Canadian dollars, that's about $6 US) and says OK, but give me back my change.

I point out the retail price of DOS, WordPerfect, MS Works, Ami Pro, and Word and the poor guy nearly has a heart attack.

Literally.

He suggests since he paid $600 for the computer, I give him the program free. (I didn't want to point out we sold the computer at a LOSS). I pointed out that we don't normally just give product out to customers. He then suggested (his only statement in English) that "I make him special price."

With his ten dollar bill still extended and a big grin on his face. I pointed out the tag and pointed to the "we don't haggle" sign on the wall.

He then suggested that if I couldn't do that, then at least (conspiratorial whisper) that I copy it to the drive. I suggest that I like having a job. He gets really annoyed and claims that I am cheating him.

Wanting to downsell him (!), I ask him if he has a printer yet to print these letters with, and he blanches at the concept that this might be more money. So I suggest he return the whole system and get a typewriter from this aisle over here. Half the price, it types, everyone'll be happy. He suggests that he wants a computer, and that he has paid out enough money, thanks, and doesn't want to pay out any more for any operating system, software, or printer. I suggest that I can't help him, and he storms out, claiming I am a racist.

Tolerating ISP customers can be really difficult at times, but you can't help having at least one belly-laugh an hour either.

Here's some of the regular stuff we hear...

Tech: "Okay, what sort of modem are you using?"

Cust: "What's a modem?"

Tech: "Okay, what sort of modem are you using?"

Cust: "A fast one."

Tech: "Okay, turn your modem off for five seconds and turn it back on again."

Cust: "Alright, it says Starting Windows 95."

Cust: "It keeps saying 'Invalid username or password'."

Tech: "Is the Caps Lock light on your keyboard turned-on?"

*click* *beep* *beep*... I guess it was.

Cust: "It keeps saying 'Invalid username or password'."

Tech: "Have you got your full name, whole email address, or just your username in the username field?"

Cust: "Oh... bye."

Cust: "It keeps saying 'Invalid username or password'."

Tech: "Have you changed your password recently?"

Cust: "Oh... yeah, bye."

Cust: *screaming* "What the hell's broken in there?"

Tech: "Um, nothing today, Sir. What seems to be the problem?"

Cust: "It keeps saying 'Invalid username or password'! It only does that when something's not working in there!"

Tech gets customer details.

Tech: "Ah, I see the problem... you haven't paid your bill for the last three months, I'll put you right through to Accounts." *transfer-very-quickly*

And my two favorites...

Tech: "[ISP] Dial-Up Support, [Tech] speaking."

Cust: "I've been on hold for over half-an-hour! What are you guys doin' in there?!"

Tech remembers the call-time indicator on phone...

Tech: "Actually Sir, you've only been on hold for 8 minutes 52 seconds."

Cust: "Oh... well... You guys have too much technology!"

*click* *beep* *beep*...

What no problem to solve?

And this guy, machine in hand, complaining in the Foyer area...

Cust: "Your SMTP server keeps sticking '[Name] on' in front of my email address. People can't reply to my messages!"

Tech's surprised customer knows what an SMTP server is...

Tech: "Um, no actually... Our SMTP server wouldn't do that, Sir. Are you sure the Reply-To address is set correctly in your mail program?"

Cust: "Of course I'm sure! I've checked it heaps of times. It's your stupid mail server!"

And so on... take machine... put machine on bench...

Turns out he had entered '[Name] on email@isp.com' into the Reply-To address in Dumblooks Express.

We now have a lovely screenshot titled "I'm a GOOSE" on our Wall of Fame and $25.00 from the customer for our troubles.

Probably one of the silliest I ever got was a woman called a little frightened. She had just purchased her new Dell and a new set of ACS495 speakers, complete with subwoofer, which she had planned on putting under desk, before something occured to her. At this point she called and we had the following conversation.

(boring intro)

Cust: Yes, I just bought the xps400 and I got my new speakers...

me: OK..

Cust: And I was going to put the subwoofer under my desk, but then I saw that it said unshielded.

Me: Yes maam, that's correct.

Cust: Well, now I'm worried about putting it under there, so I wanted to ask you if there's any danger...

Me: No maam, not that I know of...

Cust: So there's no chance that I'll get...(very quiet) cancer down there?

Whew....what a world we live in.

I actually got one!! I had read about them, but I didn't actually believe that I would ever get one, but sure enough.....

Cust: "I just got this new computer and it doesn't work! And I paid $2,000 for this #@#$ thing!"

Me: "Ok, have you checked the connections in back?"

Cust: "Yes, it doesn't work!"

Me: "Ok, do you hear the fan moving when you press the power button?"

Cust "What power button????"

Me: The one on the front of your minitower.

Cust: (silence) So, I have to press a button to turn it on? Which one?

Me: The 2nd one from the bottom.

Cust: (silence) I'm pressing it and nothing's happening!!!

(At this point I'm thinking the customer actually has a valid problem. So, I'm about to troubleshoot no post/no boot when I hear)

Cust: You did say the 3rd button right?

Me: No sir, the second.

Cust: Oh, I've been pressing the third one from the bottom.

Me: That's the floppy drive eject button. Try pressing the one with the light in it.

Cust: Oh, ok it works, thanks. (click)

That was one call I don't think I'll ever forget.

I work for an ISP in the UK but I just had to write in about

this call. He was having trouble connecting so phoned up

using his mobile and we went through the process of checking

the settings. I asked him to dial out and try to connect,

no luck, and he was kicked off.

A few seconds later, his 'phone rang.

"It's the internet calling you back", I said

"Really? Should I pick it up or will the computer do it?"

Customers...bless them!

Our company is using pcAnywhere to access remote

computer through modem when the problem occurs. We dont put

a shortcut to pcAnywhere Host into Startup, because it is some

other application using modem frequently. So when the problem

occurs I must call some person and ask to launch pcAnywhere

Host. Once I called that person. Some girl said the

person I needed is out for a lunch. I asked that girl to launch

pcAnywhere Host, because I have no time to wait.

ME: Click "Start".

G: How?

ME: Use a mouse- ist's a small device on the table.

G: (after moment) It looks like it doesn't work.

ME: Then try to press CTRL and ESC'ape keys...

G: CTRL...CTRL...CTRL... I can't find it.

ME: It's in the left bottom...

G: No. I can't find it there...

ME: It's in the left bottom of the keyboard

G: Ohhh It's on keyboard - I FOUND IT

Did I started explain her where is the ESC ? NO !!!

Then I decided it would be quicker to call after a lunch.

I just solved this problem a few mins ago (after 3 hours!)

I was working on the computer, when it suddenly showed me a low disk space warning. I knew this can't be, so i took a look at explorer and sure enought, a few hundered megs available. I ignored the error and continued working.

After 5 mins, the error pops up again. I thought: "What the h@!!".

In a short time, it began poping up in as short as 1 min.

I started trying to solve the problem, did a virus scan, probed the registery, anything i could think of.

What helped me solve the problem, was that i noticed that every time the low disk space error poped up, my norton recycle bin protection blinked to indicate activity.

So i checked it. It said it had 1500 files (the max) protected, but it wasn't true. So i emptied the bin, and shut down the norton protection, and sure enough, no more errors.

Sounds simple, except it took me nearly 3 hours to figure out, and i lost some of my hair...

I was working for a MAJOR Anti-Virus (Now part of NAI, any clues?) vendor when this call came in:

C: I think I have a new virus that your scanner doesn't pick up.

T: Really sir? Have you tried running the scanner with all options switched on?

C: Listen, I know what I'm f*****g doing! I've been using a computer for years and your piece of s*** software didn't pick up this new virus!

T: Okay sir, why do you think you've got a virus?

C: Everything I type in Word is all messed up! All the letters are wrong!

T: Can you click on Tools|Macro for me sir?

C: I haven't got that!

T: (Thinking this actually is a new virus) Okay sir, send us an infected document to (address).

Anyway, the disk comes in, we load it, no problems no macros nothing. Ring customer back, who is still having the same trouble. Decide to pay him a site visit the next day.

Anyway I walk into this big office and get taken to his desk.

I could hardly contain myself when I saw the keyboard. Some bright spark had moved all the keys around, even the numbers!

Jeez, you would have thought he _might_ have noticed the numbers at least!

User: "My password has expired. I can't log on to the network, and I have lots of work to do, and I need you to reset it for me now!"

TS: "OK, I can reset that for you. What would you like it to be? It should be at least 6 characters, and different than the last 5 passwords you have used."

User: (Sigh of disgust) "Oh Christ!"

TS: Enters ohchrist as the new password.

A while back I did technical support for one of the largest printer/scanner manufacturers in the world. One day I got a call from a very angry elderly gentleman. It went a little something....like this:

Cust:Your damn printer doesn't work! I keep scanning images and the printer just sits there, doing nothing.

Me:OK, well...let's try the basics first. Is there power to the printer and does it have paper in it?

Cust:Of course...what, do you think just because I'm old I can't figure this stuff out?

Me:All right then, are there any lights flashing on the printer?

Cust:No...there's just a solid green light.

Me:Ok, now let's see how you have the printer and scanner connected to the computer...

Cust:I didn't get a computer. Just the scanner and printer. I have the printer plugged into the back of the scanner right where the manual says to plug it in.

Me:Sir, did you just say you didn't have a computer?

Cust:Yeah...I don't want to do anything but print out pictures. The salesman told me that this scanner had a copy feature.

Me:Yes, sir...it does, but it requires that you have a computer.

Cust:What are you talking about!! These are both made by your company and you're telling me they won't work together?! If you need a computer, why doesn't it say so on the box?!!

Me:It does sir. Please look at the side panel...

(click)

I am not a tech supporter, but I know something about computers.

One day, my friend called me:

Him: My printer can't print!!!

Me: Did you turn it on?

Him: Ha? I didn't know I must turn it on...

I know it's hard to believe but it's real...

I work in technical support for a large internet service provider, answering calls and helping people get connected and retrieve their email and so forth.

I answer the phone the other day and this guy on the other end has urgency in his voice. I could tell right away that this might turn bad (irate callers are not uncommon).

User: I need some information, and if you don't know the answer I want you to call whoever you have to to find out.

Me: Okay, what's the question?

User: What is you company's stance on off-shore betting?

Me: I don't think they have a stance on it. As long as you are not sending mass mailings, or doing something illegal in your area, we really don't care what you do while you are online.

User: It doesn't seem like you really know. I want you to call who ever you have to and find out for me.

I said okay, put him on hold and called my help desk. They gave me the same answer.

Me: Sir, yea, it's like I said, you can do anything you want online as long as you are not doing anything illegal or sending mass mailings.

User: So the company isn't gonna police me at all?

Me: No sir.

User: Well then why is it that I run this program I got from Billy Bob's web site, you guys send me a message telling me that I've performed an illegal operation and that you're gonna shut me down. Now, I'm sick of you sending me that message, and I'll be very mad if you shut down my Internet account!

Me: Umm, Okay

Needless to say

I do tech support for a major computer company. I had one client

who was convinced that you could download ram from the internet.

Tech Support: Thank you for calling blah, how may I help you today?

Client: Yes, I need you to tell me what website to go to so I can download

64mb of ram in my system.

(by this point, I'm hitting the mute button on my phone)

Tech Support: Sir, you can't download ram from the internet, you need to go

to a store and purchase it. I can give you the correct specifications if you need them.

Client: I want the website to go to to download my ram. One of my buddies said that you could...and I really need that website.

Tech Support: Sir...you really need to purchase your ram. You won't be able to download it from the net

Client: Yes you can. My buddy did. I want the website.

(by this time, I'm rolling in the ailes)

Tech Support: Ok...The website is...www.ram.com

Client: Thanks! I'll go do it now.

Click!

Our favorite response to the question:

ARE YOU USING WINDOWS 95 OR WINDOWS 3.1 ?

USER: YES

It typically goes down hill from there.

They hired some doofus to do CNC programming and the guy could barely operate a PC. To make matters worse he was a real schlep, everything he touched went wrong. He screwed up things I have NEVER seen screwed up before. Typically I would come in and reboot his machine and have to mess around with it just to get him going again. Sometimes I would even watch as he did things CORRECTLY and they STILL wouldn't work for this poor sap, I would then repeat his precise steps and it would work for me every time. Mysterious!

One day after about 3 bouts of this I again watched him go through a series of steps to do some simple task; click here, press enter, click OK etc. and again and again it bombs! Fed up with it all I made a real theatric show of waving my hands over the box acting like I was going to smack it and stopped short merely tapping the corner of the CPU case. "Try it again" I prompted. "IT WORKS!" he practically screamed, "What did you do?!", I simply slipped away with a smirk on my face. The PC worked flawlessly for the remaining 3 months I was at the company. To this day I have no idea how he botched things up and what actually happened to make it work. J

Despite what you may think from prior posts I am not vengeful, but I do like to pull a prank on a user now and again.

Two of my favorites: (Windows 9X machines)

Add the command CTTY NUL to the end of the autoexec.bat, it makes Windows 95 freeze in its tracks at a blank desktop, and drives the user crazy. Fairly hard to find too.

Minimize all open apps, make sure the taskbar is visible and click on the desktop and press the PRINT SCREEN button, now open PAINT and paste the image of the screen into it. Save it in the Windows directory as desktop.bmp. No set the wallpaper to desktop.bmp. To be extra mean hide all the REAL icons somewhere else and move the users REAL taskbar to another edge of the screen and make it autohide. All the non movable icons can be set to a blank icon and named blank or "_". The user has a very real lookig desktop that just won't work.

Hey sometimes we just HAVE to get some revenge :)

I used to be one of the front line tech support staff for the largest Life and Health Reinsurance firm in Canada... and although our tech support staff got a lot of weird and wonderful calls I will recite one of the more memorable ones I took...

***********

A lady, whom I will call Sheryl (not her real name, obviously) called me frantically telling me that she could not sign into her Lotus Notes session as her password was not working. Heading off to her desk to find a resolution to this problem I had to wonder how someone could be using a password for months without a problem and then one day just have it fail..

So I arrive at her workstation and ask her to log in to Notes, and by this time, lunch is rolling around and she is getting impatient. Feeling the need to leave for lunch, she leaves me with her password "TEDDYS"... she voiced it, but didn't write it down for me, so I asked her to spell it out wanting to make sure I got it right... sure enough "T E D D Y S" and before she left for lunch I confirmed with her that she hadn't changed her password from something else in the last few days (we had just begun to show people how they could change their default password in Lotus Notes to make it more user friendly so this was a possibility to consider). She emphatically stated that she had not changed her password ever, so with her leaving for lunch I sat down to try and resolve this puzzle. After looking at all sorts of files, and dates of her notes files, I consulted with our Notes Administrator to see if her Notes password HAD been changed in the last week or so and it turned out that IT HAD been changed, and only the day before!!! We were unable to figure out what the previous password was but things were beginning to make sense... so I trotted back up to the workstation and sat down, still puzzled as to how we were going to get back into the Lotus Notes session.. then it dawned on me that perhaps the user, who wasn't that swift to begin with (what with lying about not changing her password and all) might have entered her password incorrectly but thought that it was correct.. so I started pumping in all sorts of variants... TEDYS....TEDDDYS.... TDYS... then something else dawned on me... the plural of Teddy (her password was named in honour of her Teddy bear collection ... don't even ask why!!!) is not TEDDYS... its TEDDIES... so I pump that in.. VOILA!!! We have an active Lotus Notes session... I log out smugly.. and go back to my desk waiting for her to call me...

She comes back from lunch and calls me over to her desk whereupon I asked her when she changed her password. She denies changing it so I told her that I not only knew the exact date and time she changed it, but also what the password was... to which she just shrunk into her chair sheepishly... I gave her the correct spelling of TEDDIES and told her that the next time she changes her password she should write it down...

***********

A older man called one day…….

Tech : Thank you for calling this is Chris can I help you?

User : Yes, I just upgraded from version 6.1 to 8.0 and nothing is happening.

Tech : What do you mean nothing is happening, its not starting properly?

User : No it starts but then I just get a blank screen.

Tech : Do you see anything, the toolbars are is it frozen?

User : All the toolbars are there and all I have is a blinking line on the page, what am I supost to do now ?

Tech : have you tried typing something ?

User : GREAT! Thanks for fixing it I have been trying to fix it for a week now.

Tech : (at this point I am just trying not to laff) your welcome and have a nice day

This story didn't actually happen to me but it did happen to a collegue of mine. We work for a major ISP in on the west coast. My collegue (Chris) got a call from a guy that said he couldn't connect. So Chris has him click on start(Win98). Chris said that he heard a "clanging" noise. It turns out that this guy was putting the mouse on the monitor in the area of the start button.

Where do they find these people?

I was at work. sitting in my cubicle, when i got the call.

me: "Thank you for calling ______ my name is ____, may i have your

last name and telephone number"

cust: "My name is _____, and my telephone number is _____. The problem

i keep having, is that when i click to connect, NOTHING happens,

it just sits there, and it keeps telling me the numebers, it says 35 minutes

right now...."

Well...first off, i check to find out what she is clicking on,

and low and behold she is using a Dial up Networking icon.

me: "So, your trying to connect using a DUN, correct?"

cust: "correct"

me: "Ok, to view webpages, when you double click on the DUN to connect

Once you connect, you must then double click the Internet Explorer

icon....have you spoken to anyone else about this problem?"

Cust: "Yes, i spoke to 3 previous technicians at your office, and

they couldn't figure it out, they just kept saying try to connect using

the dial up networking icon."

4 tech agents later, she was able to view webpages. But, 2 things bother me

from this call, 1 it took 4 tech agents to solve this SIMPLE problem, and 2 why

would anyone sit there, looking at the time "connected" get higher, and not

click ANYTHING....

Jeff

I was manager of a software store in Ohio, needless to say we had some less than computer literate customers.

The people who don't know anything about computers are fine, it was the people who thought they knew everything about that were a pain.

Three incidents to prove my point:

1. A lady came in wanting to purchase the Win95 Upgrade.

Grabbed it off the shelf for her and procedded to ring her up.

Handing over the cash, she comments on how Microsoft should've just included everything in Windows 95 to start with.

I asked her what she ment and she explained she wanted to change the wallpaper in Windows 95 and her friend said that she

needed to buy the Win 95 Upgrade to upgrade her Windows 95 in order to do that.

I told her all that she had to do was right-click on her desktop and go to properties. She just gave me a weird look and said she didn't want it anymore and left.

2. Another female came in a couple months later to return an answering machine program for her computer because it didn't work when the computer is turned off.

3. Finally I had a gentleman call me do get a price quote on our "P-C-one, water table soundcards".

Needless to say I pushed mute and hit the floor laughing.

I was a system administrator for a small subsidiary of a

Fortune 500 company. I supported everything from the mainframes

to desktop PCs.

I thought I had heard everything...

I got a call from one of the department managers stating that

his terminal wasn't working. Since we had quite a few older

terminals, this wasn't too uncommon.

This manager had been hired to help us with our software

engineering practices. His qualifications? A PhD from

Carnegie-Mellon.

I arrived at his office to find out the problem.

"Look," he says, striking the ENTER key several times, "it

doesn't do anything."

I reached to the side of the terminal, moved the power switch

to the ON position, hit the ENTER key and left. I actually

got all the way back to my office before bursting out with

laughter.

Well, I don't work for any techsupport staff, but I do get a lot of questions about computer stuff. One day, my friend (let's call him Strike cuz that's his handle) told me that he needed to empty his computer and start out as a brand new installation of everything he had. So I obviously told him to format his Hard Drive. He told me that was a good idea.

Next Morning when i got to school, the guy told me that he had managed to format his computer but couldn't get back in windows to install his stuff. Surely enough I asked him if he had re-installed it, and as I thought, he didn't. :p

Hi, it's me again. Guess What! Strike contacted me again and this time he has trouble booting. He asked me if I could bring him a bios disk.

I obviously asked him if he needed a boot disk and to my surprise he said that a boot disk would be stupid because the bios boots the drive. :p

I just started laughing and left without helping him out.

*Sorry If that sounds mean but after years of helping him out i'm getting tired of it.*

I used to work in Tech Support for a major computer manufacturer located in Austin TX.

One day I received a call from a gentleman who stated that his computer was not working.

After determining that it would not power on, I asked him what he had been doing the

last time the computer was working, was he surfing the 'net or playing a game or whatever.

He stated the he had been trying to install a faster modem. He had been unable to loosen

some of the screws that held the cover in place so he took a hacksaw and sawed off the back

of the chassis.

Needless to say this was not covered under warranty.

I had the most brain dead person call in for technical

support the other day..

me: Thank you for calling ______, may i have your last name

and telephone number".

The cust. gives me the information.

Cust: Whenever i try and connect, it gives me a busy signal,

or there are people talking on the other end....is there

something wrong with the server????

Me: Can you connect to the 1-800#?

cust: Yes

Me: Ok, if you can connect to the internet using the 1800#,

then there is NOTHING wrong with the server.

cust: But, i cant connect to my number, this busy signal is

not going away, can you fix it?

Me: Well....what number is it dialing?

cust: Well... first we tried putting my number in but we kept

getting the busy signal, and the second time we tried to

connect using my friends telephone number, and that was when

we kept people talking....

Me: (laughing like crazy) There is your problem.... you need

to put the internet connection number (telephone number) to be

the number to be dialed.

cust: But, my friend told me it should be his number...

me: Well...your friend is not correct, this is the correct number,

pleasem try this number, and try again...

What a MAROON!

I work for an ISP in the Upper Midwest:

ME: Thank you for calling "something.something" blah,blah.

"How can I help you?"

SHE: I just installed "something.something" and my e-mail messages

aren't in my outbox folder after I send them.

ME: Try your "sent folder."

SHE: How did you fix it so quickly?

I do support for an ISP in the upper midwest. I would like to know

the following:

1. Why, when I take an EU in the control panel|network|TCP/IP

properties, do they feel like they have to read to me the

entire warning paragraph? I have heard this 20 times allready today

and IT DOESN'T CHANGE.

2. Why do EU's insist, when they can't connect today after they

were fine yesterday, that the problem isn't with their settings

and so they aren't willing to check out the control panel?

3. Why do EU's who have two phone lines call us for help on troubleshooting

their connection call us on the line that they use to connect to the internet?

4. Why do EU's call us from work because they are having trouble on

their home computers?

5. If your Windows 95 instructor says you can create an ISP account

without downloading or software or loading our CD, ask him or her to

come to your house and DO IT. Why do you insist that I am lyig to

you?

6. Why do EU's insist on using the internet when they don't even know

what a space bar is? Did you go straight to a harley Davidson or did

you learn how to ride a bicycle first?

7. Why do you call us on a Holiday for tech support and

then ask us why we aren't spending the day with our families?

Today at school i doing Ip (info prossesing) when this girl who set next to

me started to panic i looked at her and then at sceen she

had restarted the computer but she did not know this.

Anyway her and the teacher how do not get on was just about

in the class room and she was packing it. The teacher walked

and i asked her what she had and she replied "I was only

playing with the button on the front"

Tech: Hello, thank you for calling ????

Cust: I WANT THE INTERNET OFF MY COMPUTER!!! I HAVE CALLED YOU PEOPLE ALL MONTH TO HAVE THE INTERNET REMOVED BUT NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE (all I hear is blahblahblah)

Tech: Ok Mrs.???? let me check to see if we are still billing this account.

(After a while of surfing the net I decided to get back to the call)

Tech: Well it looks like we've stopped billing you on the date you requested

Cust: Well the internet is still on my computer. I have a blue "E", a little telephone, and a world with a envelope around it.

Tech: hmmm.. I wonder what the problem is...

(It ended up taking a good 10 minutes to explain that those are just icons that can be removed. Don't ask how long it took to get the customer to drag-and-drop)

This story was told to me by a fellow tech.

The user calls and says that his PC isn't working.

Of course you start with the basics.

tech Is there anything on the screen?

user No.

tech Is it turned on?

user Yes. The power switch is in the "on" position.

tech Is the little green light at the bottom of the monitor lit?

user No. I don't see anything like that.

tech Is the PC plugged in?

user I'll have to put you on hold while I get a flashlight to check that.

And he immediately sets down the receiver.

The tech thought that sounded very odd. When the guy returned, he said that it

looks like the computer was plugged in all right. He asked the user why he needed a

flashlight. He said that the power was off in the building and so the lights weren't

working.

No kidding.

What did he think, that the PC was windmill powered. The other astounding thing to

this is that he had someone with him, trying to help figure this out.

i work in a new israeli isp. i got a call from a client one day and the dialog went like that :

me : hello how may i help u

client : i'm trying to connect and i can't log on

me : what seems to be the problem ?

client : i got a window with a timer, and there's a timer there that is running, and im waiting for it to end.

how long must i wait before the timer stops, and it will connect me?

i have been working in technical support for 6 monthes, and

it never stop to amaze me

I was working for a small town computer store several years

ago and someone brought in their machine for service. They

said it was working fine and then just quit.

Upon examining the case I found that it was missing some of

the blanks that cover the expansion card slots. When I opened

the case inside I found a mouse nest resting on the motherboard.

Nice warm bed right next to the processor, unfortunately they

had been urinating on the motherboard for so long that the

liquid had actually corroded the board causing it short out.

>From an actual problem ticket:

User states that she spoke with the Director of her division and he wants this problem resolved immediately. The user's PC is freezing up frequently; she states there is no discernible pattern. User gets the message "you may lose formatting if you save this document" when she attempts to save Powerpoint 97 and Word 97 documents, though the user states that she is definitely NOT set up to save documents in older formats (Word 95/6.0). User states that she is a Microsoft Products demo rep, and 'ought to know'.

Resolution: Installed Norton AntiVirus, cleaned viruses, and Yes, she was saving in Word 95/6.0 format.

Got a call from a very upset customer stating that they had

lost all of their documents. I asked all of the standard

questions about what they had changed with the system, etc.

Of course they hadn't changed anything...

Every thing seemed to be working fine but every document they

opened was blank. After trying to talk them through it on the

phone I couldn't figure it out.

Went out to their site to seeif I could find the problem in

person. One thing that I noticed was if you clicked and dragged

the mouse across the screen you could see the highlighted

text but if nothing was highlighted the page was completely blank.

Finally it ocurred to me to look at the display properties and

sure enough they had set the font color to the be the same

as the background color. The text was there it was just invisible.

I showed them what they had done and they finally admitted

that they had been playing with the properties...

Here's the breakdown and lead in, I work for a very large ISP

which we will refer to affectionatley as Ma' Bell Net (you

should know who this is by now).

CSR: Thank you for calling Ma' Bell Net Service my name is Russell.

May I have the telephone you registered with please?

Cust: 888-888-8888

CSR: Thank you may I have your last name please?

Cust: Bob

CSR: How may I help you today?

Cust: I can't check my other e-mail which was working last night.

CSR: Sir, is this other e-mail address through Ma' Bell?

Cust: Yes!, *rattles off address which is not with Ma' Bell.*

CSR: *Deciding to try and help anyway* Sir can you connect

to this other e-mail over Ma'Bell's servers?

Cust: Yes!

CSR: Walks Cust. through setting up connection to other mail

server despite it not being our problem! and chooses connect

using LAN so it won't dial out... Cust: keeps getting prompt for

username and PW on that server.

CSR: Sir unfortunatley I can no longer trouble shoot this,

as this is information I cannot provide you need to contact

the other internet service company for that info.

Cust: I want to speak with your supervisor.

CSR: Pages SUP fills in etc...

SUP: Hello Mr. Bob I'm a Ma' Bell Net supervisor how may I help you?

Cust: Re-states issue, yet this time mentions Mark's Backyard ISP

SUP: Gets to where I was where it keeps prompting Cust. for Username and PW

CSR: I immediatly hop on the net find Lil Bell's site.

CSR: Gestures frantically at screen as he highlights tech suppt for

Lil Bell.

SUP: I'm sorry sir but I cannot help you with that it's a

different department let me re-connect you with the technician so

he can connect you with them. *drops Cust. back to me*

CSR: Hello, again sir may I please place you on hold while

I contact the other department? *place Cust. on hold*

Dial number...

Lil Bell Tech supt: Thank you for calling yadda yadda

CSR: Hi this is Russell with Ma' Bell Tech support, we have

a cust. here who thinks that the e-mail address for his business

web site, which is with you is through us.

Lil Bell Tech supt: Thanks for the warning.

*** At this point I hear Lil Bell Tech supt. say his say statement

to the cust. then say yes the other agent contacted me and then

they go into setting up his other e-mail.***

This customer was utterly convinced that he had that e-mail

acct. through us and wouldn't let us connect himt o Lil Bell,

so in the end we lie and conferance.

I worked for a medium sized ISP that was bought up by a larger Web Hosting ISP that always had it's eyes on the green (cough).

While I was working Tech support there I came across quite a few stories. Some of which further my belief that you should have a license to use the Internet.

Two stories that stand out are....

The woman calls into the Tech Support line. We were a bit short handed so my supervisior picks up the call.

The woman on the other end is frantic; she is screaming that we lied to her about getting service and they she wants her money back right now.

My supervisor, being the most patient woman in the world, decides to try to help her before sending her off to billing for a refund.

My supervisor asks the woman what was wrong? The woman replies that there is no place to insert the disks we sent her to get her on the Internet.

My supervisor asks what kind of computer she has and the woman replies, "I don't have a computer. I was told that all I needed to get on the Internet was a modem and your software!"

We promptly refunded the woman her money.

The second one deals with a secretary that should have stuck with the IBM typewriter on her desk.

She called up saying that she could not get online, it was workign the day before, but now nothing was working. I pulled the logs regarding her account

and did not see any log entriesd for her, but belived her none the less (bad move).

I asked her what Os she was running. She said she did not know.

I asked her is she had a bar at the bottom of the window that said start in left hand corner. She replied "no".

I asked her if she had a bar at the top with a little Apple in the left corner. She said no.

I then assumed she had the start button in auto-hide. I asked her to move the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen and to tell me if a grey bar popped up.

She said that she could not move the mouse beause she could not see it.

"Ma'am" I grumbled, "Please turn the computer on."

AAARRRGHHH

In my early days as a programmer, we used dumb terminals.

Whenever you signed on at the terminal, a "profile" program

would run to set some of your defaults. Whenever you edited

a file, a similar program would run to set up your

editing defaults.

One day I came in, signed on, and began working. Shortly

afterwards, I got a brief message from a male friend of

mine. It said simply "Hi yourself." I was a little puzzled,

since I hadn't sent HIM anything, but I thought nothing of

it and kept working. During the course of my morning, I

kept getting cryptic messages from my friend. "Okay."

"Sounds good!" "I said yes!". Finally, he came over and

said "Do you know that you keep sending me messages?".

It turned out that I hadn't signed myself off the night

before. A prankster from the office, knowing full well that

I was happily involved with someone, had set up one of my

profile programs to send a "Hi, handsome" message to my

friend when I signed on. As if that wasn't embarrassing

enough, he'd set up my other profile program to send a

"Want to go for a drink after work?" message every time I

edited a file. My friend had been flattered at first, but

when he got the "drink" message for the fifth time, he

started to smell a rat.

I never left myself signed on again.

This is a typical call scenario......

Help desk...how may I help you?

"This is Ms. Phillips on floor 33 and I'm getting an error message on this machine!"

Ok, what type of system are you on?...a docked laptop? desktop system? Unix? Sun?

"I don't know.It just won’t work. I can’t get it to shut down. The Control /Alt/ Delete isn’t working and I can’t get it to end task."

That’s Ok…what were you doing when the system froze?

"Nothing."

Were you in any program when this happened?

"Yes."

Ok, which program did you have open?

"I had Groupwise, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Adobe Acrobat, the Internet and I was trying to print a document to my local printer. I saw a mistake right as I hit print but it didn’t stop. I hit Control / Alt/ Delete…nothing happened…then I tried to close all the programs because I couldn’t see the print box anymore. And now nothing is working and I can’t even find the mouse pointer thing."

I thought you said you didn’t do anything before this happened.

"I didn’t do anything. It just froze."

Ok…no problem. Do you have on a dress?

"(long pause)……No…"

Do you have on pants?

"Yes….(as she hesitates)"

Ok….can you see the power cord under your desk? The one that goes up to your computer?

"Yes…I see a big gray one. Is that it?"

Yes mam….now…I want you to reach under your desk and unplug that big fat gray cord.

"Will I get electricuted if I do that?"

(in my mind…..”Only if I’m lucky”….)

No Mam…just go ahead and unplug it.

"Ok I did and plugged it back in….but nothings happening".

No Mam…just unplug it and don’t do anything until I tell you.

"Ok…I did it again."

(waiting for 30 seconds…long pause)

OK Mam…go ahead and plug it back in….Mam?…Hello? Hello? (dead silence on the other end)

Phone rings…….

Help Desk…may I help you?

"I’m sorry…I unplugged the phone line by mistake. I was trying to call you and then realized you were not on the line anymore."

"OK…now what?"

(Patience is wearing thin)

Ok Mam….go ahead and plug the gray cord back in.

"OK I did it. But now the screen is black."

I know. Go ahead and turn the system back on.

"How do I do that?"

Just like you do every day.

"I have never turned it on. I never turn it off when I

leave."

How long have you worked for the company?

"Over a year."

(I’m thinking…”Other peoples children”)

Do you see that little button on the front of your computer?

"Yes"

Press the button.

Long pause…………….

“OH my…look at that!” I never saw this before."

(“You would if you ever turned the silly machine off like you are supposed to at night…(company policy)”)

"Ok…it’s asking me for my password."

Ok..go ahead and enter your password.

"I don’t remember what it is."

(Oh my…and on and on we go……this call took over 90 minutes for a simple power restart.)

Need I say more?

I suppose I should stop being surprised by people who assume that if a course title includes the word "Beginning" -- then it is OK to enter even if they have little or no experience. I'm not talking "Beginning Windows" or "A Beginner's Guide to Computers," I'm referring to more advanced software like the various desktop publishing and graphics options.

Case in point -- after much begging & pleading, I got my bosses to send me to a "Beginning Coreldraw" class.

There were the usual number of people who are really slow learners regardless of what they're studying. Them I can generally tolerate.

The guy next to me turned out to be really scary. Not in a Charles Manson kinda way. Turns out the man had computer experience -- but only in DOS. I think he had seen Windows on other people's computers, maybe even watched them use it.

But he had never actually worked in a Windows environment or used a mouse prior to class. (As a matter of fact, during the round of introducing ourselves in the 1st few minutes of the class, he admitted that he'd seen his coworkers using Coreldraw & figured if they could do it, so could he. Wrong.)

I watched him spend about 2 minutes clicking on a non-highlighted option on a pull-down menu. Guess he thought if he kept at it long enough, the computer would finally give up & let him use that option. If he clicked his left mouse button & nothing happened, he'd click the right mouse button. At one point he was trying to do something & getting nowhere. I took pity & said -- you need to do this step first & then another step. He didn't know you had to wait until the hourglass went away before attempting step 2. He also had to be told repeatedly that "click" meant using the left mouse button.

So, for the first 90 minutes of the class, the instructor made a valiant attempt to teach the whole class Coreldraw while teaching this guy Windows at the same time. Fortunately, the guy withdrew from the course at the first break.

This one's on me...I'm an *extremely* nearsighted MCP who's been surviving in an operations environment from the DOS/VSE mainframe days, to NT 4.0, by sitting at my control console and sublimely clicking on icons/fields I've memorized the locations for...it's pretty sad..not only do I "know" that my shortcut for 'server mgr' is the third blur from the bottom on the first row of blurs from the left, but I even use the pulldown menus in the same way. Once I get into my apps, I stand up, lean forward, and peer at the screen to see what I'm doing, but frankly, I've gotten very used to having the layout of my screens memorized (and my policies reflect same).

Anyway, I've got a bunch of management geeks in the Data Center, and it is VERY late in the DAY on a shift that started at 6AM, and another NT admin has signed in on one of "my" consoles, hence his policy is now in effect. This leaves me with a bunch of suits staring at me, as I play blind man's (woman's?) bluff on my console. I couldn't find Server Mgr to bounce a service on a remote server to save my life. My going out to the command prompt to stop the service would have been very impressive, except that it was preceded by the following: "Alright, which *#$% MOVED ALL MY ICONS??!!"

One of the suits looked at me pityingly and said, "You really don't see very well, do you?".

My response? "Ya see all those smears on the management console screens? They're all NOSE PRINTS!"

After spending the better part of 4 years in a computer retail store this is the story that still makes me chuckle. A customer who had had his PC for over 6 months rang one day to say that his screen was faulty. There were places on the monitor where he could "see through the screen and see all the things behind it".

"They are tiny little holes but I want it fixed!" he demanded. I'd seen Notebook screens with pixels missing but was sure it didn't happen with our monitors. After more complaining he agreed to bring it in so we could look at it.

He thumped it on our workbench, we plugged it in and all stared. "There!" he shouted as he pointed at several patches on the screen where the colour was blurred. I wiped over one of them with a cloth and it dissappeard. His face grew red as each dot dissappeared as it was wiped and I explained without trying to laugh "Little drops of moisture, sir. Easy mistake to make."

His reply "Oh...I wondered why it broke right after I had sneezed".

The only other story of note is the elderly couple who came in and spent a solid ten minutes looking at our shelves of games before asking me "Where is your Comedy Section?"

There was a short uncomfortable silence before the old gentlemen let me off the hook and turned to his wife "Rita, I don't think this is a video shop after all".

I do not work for tech support anymore, but I'm still the first person asked when friends/family/co-workers have trouble with their "pewters".

My aunt gave her old computer (a Packard *ell 486) to her friend and asked me if I'd be nice enough to set it up for her. So I trek over to her house, hook up mouse, KB, monitor, etc. and fire the puppy up. I get an "Fixed Disk configured incorrectly" error right away. I go into setup, everything is fine, and by all means, it should work fine. I try several configurations and nothing...same error.

So I do what I should have done in the first place: I crack the case open and see if everything is connected fine, oddly enough, I don't see a Hard drive. Moving cables around and cursing the blasted afforementioned computer company I look around for it and find nothing.

Turns out my cousin figuring her mother didn't want the computer anymore had taken out the hard drive and given it to her boyfriend...

(ARGH!!)

Several years ago I was working as a technician for the military. Once day I got a call from the Commander's secretary who was all flustered - it seems her printer was possesed. It was printing a single line of gobbleygook (technical term, mind you), form feeding the page, printing another line, spit, print one line, spit...this had been going on for 20 minutes and she had slayed several small trees. She had tried shutting the printer off and turning it back on, but of course the device was on the network, and the printer queue would just restart the job.

I drove over and logged into the server console, and cleared the print queue, then took a look at what file was causing all the ruckus. Yes, it was a zip file she had received from higher headquarters. She had just clicked on the attachment and told it to print.

I spent the next hour explaining quite patiently just what a zip file was, what it was used for, and what she needed to do when she got one. I installed an unzip program for her, unzipped it, and showed her the contents. The zip file had about 70 word documents bundled into it. She was dismayed to find out that yes, she had to individually print each file by hand (at least she had kept up with me this far).

I just knew that this was not going to be the end of it....

Less than a week later she called up again, with the same exact story - printer was going nuts. You guessed it, she went and tried to print that same zip file. Some people can't learn from their mistakes.

I work for a fairly large isp. Needless to say our tech support department services a large radius of customers. On particular day, I was greeted by a jolly old woman and her husband. They explained to me they just couldn't get their computer on the net, and they decided to make the 1 1/2 journey to the office so we could assit her. I told her great! I began toward her car, when i saw the monitor sitting on the seat. I caught myself before laughter hit, this was the only pieace she brought us.

Never the less, she returned the next day, cpu in hand.

I'm sure that all through these calls I asked at least a dozen times what the full error message was.

It starts with me coming back from lunch with a message to call a customer with a tech problem (yep I'm the only one who deals with them in our company). So I call.

"I'm getting a message saying that it can't print." is the mournful cry.

"OK" I empathise, "What is the error message say?"

"Just something about It can't print to Lpt and to check connections."

"Is everything plugged in OK?" said I hoping for a nice quick and easy -all it needs is to plugged in job, nope not this time.

"Yes I've checked it a few times"

"Right lets have a look at the settings - go to the start|printers|and rightmouse click on the printer icon"

"I can't I'm at my house at the moment - it's on my friends computer at her house."

I put the phone on mute for a while as I find a brick wall to bang my head against. "OK Is it the same type of printer and computer at your friends house? And is your computer working?"

I was so happy to get a yes on both counts.

"Right," I say with hope glimering on the edge of my vision, "go to the printer icon as I said before and right mouse click and go to the properties area. Write down what is showen there, go to your friends house and compare the two." (click)

Just enough time to get a bottle of Coke glug glug glug

She calls back. "The details are the same, I havn't changed anything."

"OK - try printing a test page."

"I get the error message"

"What was the error message again?"

All I got was a vague answer about connections.

"Please check your plugs etc" - all fine

Hmmmmm I think (smoke billows from my ears) "Lets try the add new hardware wizard". So I give instructions on how to do that. "Call me back when it's done."

Time for another bottle of Coke. Glug glug

"It's saying no new hardware found."

"Let's try re-installing the printer. Go to start|printers|add printer" and we run through the process.

"Right can you print a test page?"

"Just the error message"

"What was the error message again?"

Again a vague answer about lpt or ltp and connections

"Please," I nearly beg, "What is the exact error message?"

"Unable to print to lpt1, please check your connections and that the printer is on-line"

"Ummmm", I hesitate, could this be it! My little heart beats with excitement...."Is the printer on-line at the moment?"

"There is an orange instead of green light next to the on-line button and also next to the ink button."

(groan) "Does the printer cartridge have ink in it?"

"No - does that matter?"

"Ahh - yes if you get a cartridge with ink in it then you'll find that it will work just fine."

"Thank-you you've been a great help - little brother"

Yep it was my sister all the time. (click)

Right time for yet another bottle of coke.

Hissssss, glug glug glug ahhhhhh...

you know how people can interpret what we

tell them literally? Well this one has really shocked us:

Me: Hello , this is Ofer , How may I help you?

customer: Well ,I can't connect to the internet.

Me: Ok ,Let's check your Dial up settings.Can you please

go to my computer?

Customer: What? Do You want me to come over to your

computer?

-FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!!

I received a help desk call one morning from a lady in one of our offices. She said that her computer had been making funny buzzing sounds for more than an hour but everything appeared to be working properly. I could hear a powerful buzzing over the phone in the background. It would buzz like crazy for a few seconds and then stop, buzz again, stop... I went downstairs to her office to investigate. Sure enough the buzz seemed to be coming from the computer. I did a quick check of the system and could find no evident problems. I finally put my ear up against the case to see if I could isolate the noise and discovered that there was only normal fan noise coming from the case. I expanded my search to include the surrounding area, still with no luck. The last place I looked was in the center desk drawer of her desk and there I discovered a handful of loose screws laying on the bottom of a metal desk drawer along side of a pager, set to the vibrate mode. The pager would vibrate and the screws would rattle like crazy.

The story doesn't end here... I reset the pager and returned it to the drawer and then asked the lady to come back to her desk. I told her that I thought that I had corrected the problem and then asked to use her phone. I dialed the pager and then walked out of the office. As I was about halfway down the hall I heard her shout that the problem was back. I went back to the office and simply opened the desk drawer to reveal the pager buzzing away merrily in the desk drawer. Big time red face and a major source of laughs for me and my team.

The story still doesn't end here. Several months later I had another "computer buzzing" call from a person in a different department. I went to their office, listened for a moment to the noise and then immediately started to search all of the desk drawers. The lady in the office thought I had lost my mind until I opened the bottom drawer of the desk to reveal a pager, once again set to the vibrate mode, buzzing away in a tray full of loose change. Now the story ends... for now anyhow! Has anyone seen my pager?

We received a call from an irate customer who claimed our software had a bug.

After talking with the customer we learned the problem was that our

software was turning the printer paper blue.

Since our software does not print in color (especially on a non-color printer),

we knew something else was up.

We had the customer open the paper tray and tell us what color the paper was.

Believe it or not, the paper was blue. Problem solved, world saved.

Where I work there are some people so dim you could scream.

Me: Hello (Blah blah blah) How can I help?

Cust: How do I select a group of messages in Outlook?

Me: Easy, you click on the top one, then hold down the shift key and click on the bottom one.

Cust: Which one's the shift key?

This from a secretary who has been here for ten years!

I work for an ISP. Due to problems with the LT Winmodem drivers shipped with certain models of PC's we have set up a web page where users can download the updated drivers.

The address is www.ourcompany.com/modem.htm

One user only had one phone line so I gave him very detailed directions on how to get to the page and download the driver. After having him repeat the instructions, I hung up and let him get to it.

Two hours later he called back, when I recognized his username I asked him how the download went.

He promptly told me my instructions were crap. He checked Yahoo, Infoseek, and Altavista and "www.ourcompany.com/modem.htm" wasn't in any of them.

He didn't know you could go to a URL directly by using the Address line in Internet Explorer.

I just got off the phone with a lady from Georgia. Her computer freezes up and instead of picking up the phone by the computer to call tech support, she goes down the road to the 7-11 and calls us because she thinks she will mess something up if she uses her phone.

What she wanted us to do for her from the 7-11 phone booth still mystifies me. I told her to go home, shut the computer off and call back on the phone by her computer IN HER HOUSE.

Not a story, but something a little humorous, re-written

for folks in the company 'techdome':

The Charge of the Tech Brigade

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

On in the Dome of Tech

Strode the six hundred.

"Forward , the Tech Brigade!

Charge for the servers!" he said;

Into the Dome of Tech

Strode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Tech Brigade!"

Was there a man who dismay'd?

Not tho' the SysAdmin knew

Some one had blunder'd:

Their's not to make reply,

Their's not to reason why,

Their's but to do or die:

Into the Dome of Tech

Strode the six hundred.

Crash'd to the right of them,

Crash'd to the left of them,

Users in front of them

Groan'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with shout and "Aw, hell!"

Boldly they strode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Strode the six hundred

Flash'd all their cursors there,

Flash'd as they wrote in the air,

Skewing the error codes there,

Chasing a mystery, while

All the world wondere'd:

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right thro' the code line they broke;

Network and System

Reel'd from the key-stroke

Stutter'd and start'd.

Then they strode back, but not,

Not the six hundred.

Connect! to the right of them,

Connect! to the left of them,

Users in front of them

Applaud'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with praise and laurel,

While desktop and hero fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro' the jaws of Death

Back from the mouth of Hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of the six hundred.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder'd,

Honour the charge they made

Honour the Tech Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

I just got off a call with a user who SWORE that he was running Windows 85. 'Nuff said.

I work for a police department in their systems division. Overall we have competent users and we don't have too many problems, but two people, who happen to share the same office are the worst.

Jackie and Ellen (names changed to protect my job) always have something going wrong, the worst so far is our network was not working thanks to some construction, well I made sure to explain this to Jackie who was in the office at the time and even told her that mail, the internet and printing, all would not work until we finnished repairing the line the next day. Lo and behold I come in the next day and Ellen had told Jackie that she had some problems and asked her to pass it along to systems. I walked up to their office and Jackie explained to me how Ellen couldn't read her mail, print, or surf the internet.

I just told her that we would fix it on the server end and it should work that evening.

One of my favorite "black and white issue" users called me one

day to tell me her computer was not running. She is the type who

blames everything on the computer techs if she has any problems at

all.

I ask her "What's the problem".

Answer: "My computer has a black screen"

Me: "Does it say anything on the screen?"

Her: Yes. Some memory mumbo jumbo.

Me: Anything else?

Her: Oh, keyboard error.

Me: Jane (pseudonym) that means you're keyboard is not connected.

Her: What? It's not my keyboard! (defensively)

Me: Have you looked?

Her: Well, no. I KNOW THAT'S NOT IT!

Me: Okay, I'll come down and take a look at it.

(Hang up.)

I went downstairs to her cube/area, looked at the screen, crawled under

desk...and voila! An unplugged keyboard. I reboot her machine and away I go!

Boy,did she feel dumb!

After being up late working on my home PC I was reinstalling

Win98 on a PC at work. Since I've done this many times the

settings are really "straight" forward. The TCP/IP

settings use a DHCP server to obtain all the settings and

addresses. After rebooting I still didn't have a network

connection. Okay, check the TCP/IP settings and reboot.

Nope, tweak the settings mupltiple times with no success.

Okay, have a coworker look at it and get frustrated.

Finally he asked me if plugging the network cable

in would help.

I need more sleep.

This actually happened yesterday--I work for a contracting house supporting NT in a fairly large enterprise. We had an SMS server hang at a small remote site. (SMS is used for, among other things, monitoring hardware and software on client systems, and automating installation and upgrades of extant software--in otherwords, the Admin folks can "see" what is installed on a system, and can replace unauthorized software, etc.)

The server needed to be rebooted, and no techs are at this site. This meant guide-dogging a secretary over to the correct box and pointing her at the big red switch. We described the system to her (all over speaker phone, which shared what will become legend at our company as fast as e-mail can fly).

NT: Okay...press the on/off switch, wait a few seconds and then turn the machine back on.

SEC'Y: Uh...OK...this one here? (sound of click, whirring, a couple of happy Compaq beeps...)

NT: Yep...now...look at the screen and tell us what you see (looking for hard stop errors, dumps, etc...)

SEC'Y:....sound of grunting and something very heavy scraping over a hard surface...

NT: Uhhhh? Are you alright? What's going on?!

SEC'Y: I'm turning the screen around.

NT: Yer whaaaat??!! WHY?!

SEC'Y: Well...this is the "spy computer" that sees everything we do, right?

NT: Well...yeah, we do monitor configurations and stuff...

SEC'Y (very "I'm in the soup, now" tone of voice) Well...we turned the screen around so it can't see us...y'know...if we're late or somethin'...

NT: (sound of muted hysterical giggling, choking, and gasping for breath)

I do NT support for a contracting house, and the level 1 help desk has undergone some turnover in the past few months. The current crew is trying hard but still needs some time to ramp up.

I get a call from a help desk tech the other day who is long on attitude and short on technical ability.

She calls up and asks me if 'xxx' server is down, as a user is experiencing problems connecting to it. I ask her if she's tried pinging it.

Her response was, "I can't ping it!" I immediately asked what exactly was happening when she tried a ping. She repeated that she couldn't "do a ping". When I asked why...she responded, "I can't do pings because I don't have sound on my computer"!

Unfortunately, I groused about this incident and am now in the process of developing a training document explaining the finer points of 'ping', 'netview', and 'traceroute'.