Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Our company had a mainframe system a few years ago, before the Client/Server days. A call came in one day that "all of the characters are upside down" on his monitor. Our hardware technician showed up and immediately "fixed" the problem by flipping his monitor right-side-up! (It seems he worked with some practical jokers!)

Our company was in the process of upgrading all PCs from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. In most cases, the PC was actually removed from the user's desk and taken down to the computer room so that the transition could be made without the user's looking over the tech's shoulders, asking questions, etc. Each user was notified of a day and time that their PC would be upgraded.

Early one morning a call came in from a user that her "PC isn't doing anything." She "turned on the power switch and nothing is happening." The call was transferred to our hardware technicians (who also happened to be doing the upgrades). One technician called back and told me, "I don't know what power switch she is pressing, but I have her PC down here with me!"

A friend sent me this---from what I've heard, this is an actual note that went out to Field Engineers at the big (blue) computer company awhile back. Whoever wrote it was either very imaginative or had no imagination at all (I hope the formatting holds up)

Abstract: Mouse Balls Available as FRU (Field Replacement Unit)

Mouse Balls are now available as FRU. Therefore, if a mouse fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only be attempted by properly trained personnel.

Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be harder and larger than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ depending on the manufacturer of the

mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop-off method. Domestic balls are replaced using the twist off method. Mouse Balls are usually not static sensitive. However, excessive handling can result in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately.

It is recommended that each replacer have a pair of spare balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction, and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing these necessary items.

(Deary me....)

I got a help desk ticket from a user that has a lot of problems we classify as PEBCAK... Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. She had recently been upgraded to a new computer, and now she's complaining that she can't find any of her old files, and she's scared that they're all gone.

I took a walk to her office and it went like this:

Me: So where are the files normally?

User: in this directory, here...see, there's nothing in this folder.

Me: You need to scroll up to see what's in the folder. Try this...

I scrolled up and there's a folder she was looking for. I proceed to open it, and then she said...

User: But there's only 5 folders in here...where's everything else?

Me: (noticing that at the top of the window it says '16 items in folder') try scrolling up.

User: Oh, there they are! That's what I was looking for. Thanks!

Like I said, PEBCAK. ;)

My Mom is very computer illiterate, but she is learning.

She often calls me (longdistance) to ask about simple things like emptying the recycle bin. The reason for the calls is that she is very affraid that she will damage the computer (It belongs to my father, and he is very fond of it) like this.

One day she calls me totally frantic and says that she has broken the computer. I know that she would never remove the cabinet so I'm quite sure that the computer isen't broken, but just frozen. I tell her to reboot, and nothing happens. I ask her what has happend, and she tells me that she was fooling around and a dialogbox appered saying somthing about deliting the reg database. My brother had told her just to say yes when ever a dialogbox appered, so she chosse yes. I explained to her what had happend and made her reboot with an emergensy boot disk and talked her trougt er installing the reg database.

Later that evening my brother rang and told me that some of his nem games diden't work, needless to say I told him to reinstall them.

I'm not a computer tech, but I am computer illiterate and work at a big box retailer as a sales rep. Perfect place to get some odd and funny questions.

C= Customer

M= Me

1.

C: Hi, do you know much about Console Games?

M: yes, how can I help you?

C: well, I've heard about this thing called Bleem! for Playstation games, but is there a N64 version?

2. Can I use my Gameshark on my PC?

The following is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal by Jim Carlton. I thought you would enjoy it as much as I did!

1. Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.

2. AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.

3. Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble- shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer labeled the diskettes then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.

4. Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the floppies.

5. A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.

6. Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.

7. Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so a Dell tech suggested he go to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a couple of friends," the customer replied. When told Egghead was a software store, the man said, "Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks."

8. Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.

9. A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid". The tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.

10. An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens." The "foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.

11. Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in, and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked "What power switch?"

12. True story from a Novell NetWire SysOp:

Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"

Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?"

Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?"

Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"

Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."

Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, It's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?"

Caller: "It came with my computer, I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it."

At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive!

We got this message in a feedback form about our technical support:

I wish you would fix that squealing problem when you first dial

in. Tech support tried to tell me it was my modem, but it is DEFINITELY NOT

my modem. I was at a friends house who has Raex and her computer did the

same thing. Sometimes it dials 4-5 times and squeals before it will dial

correctly and go through.

I work for a small ISP. Just a few seconds ago had a call

that went something like this:

Me;click specify name server addresses

Him; ok

Me; The primary DNS is ***.***.***.***

Him; two

15sec. pause

Him; 0

After a 3min battle to get the DNS entry in he asks ever so

calmly 'That's the secondary DNS right?

Me; (mute)AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The rest of the call only took me ten minutes (this was the

only thing I helped him with).

I work for a cubsidiary of an English company in Seattle as tech support and one day nopt to long ago i recieve a call from a customer and it goes something like this:

(me)thank you for calling XXXX tech support how may i help you?

(user)Yeah i got a prob with my machine.

(me) ok what seems to be the trouble?

(U)well i am running my computer fine but the mouse is getting hot.

(me)hot?

(U)yes it getts to hot to touch and i want a replacement!

(me)hold on let me talk to my boss.

(click)

talk to boss.

(click)

(Me)ok sir? do you have any other equip[ment near your computer?

(U)just a desk lamp.

(me) lamp? is it directly above the mouse?

(u) yes why?

(me) ok sir move the lamp away from the mouse. the 100 watt bulb is heating the plastic and causing it to be to hot.

(u)oh would that really do that?

(me)yes (click.)

I was on a call and in the background all of a sudden I hear a small boy’s(sounded like he must have been in elementary school) voice talking to from what I heared, his uncle. Not about computers or anything, but still, it was really funny.

Boy: Hey uncle, all unmarried grown up people are gay!!!

Uncle: Gay?!

Boy: Yeah, your not married to anyone, and you’re a grown up, you must be gay!!!

Uncle: I’m not gay!

Tech: *By this point I was in mute, this was too funny, customer is blabbing about how he can’t dial in*

Boy: Do you like girls?

Uncle: Yeah I like girls

Boy: So why aren’t you married, are you sure your not lying about being gay?

Tech: *Too bad the customer had a easy question so the call ended about now, this was one funny conversation going on in the background!*

Here's a caller that liked his motorcycles a little too much.

Tech: Thanks for calling tech support, how can I help you?

Caller: *Guy in his 40s probably* Yeah, when I connect to you guys, my screensaver does weird stuff

Tech: What do you mean by weird stuff?

Caller: Well, I have this motorcycle screensaver, and when I started using you guys for internet, it stopped making the sound effects!

*At this point, the caller started to mimic quite poorly a revving motor cycle, then taking off, keep in mind this guy sounded like he was in his 40’s.*

Caller: Vroooooom!!! Vrooooom! Vroooooom!! Vrooooooooooooooooooooom!!!

*This has to have been one of the funniest calls I’ve ever taken, hearing that guy act like a motorcycle was really funny, I had to take a few minute break just to stop laughing*

What happened is a customer called in wanting me to help him config his cable modem. Perfectly normal call, until he tells me about his experience installing his network card.

*Since this guy sounds "computer challenged", want to see if this is going to be a quick call or not so I check to see if his nic is installed properly.

Tech: OK, let’s goto winipcfg

Customer: OK

Tech: Is you nic listed under adapters in the drop down listing, or is their just PPP?

Customer: Just PPP

Tech: Did you install the nic yourself?

Customer: Yeah, I took the case off, plugged it in, and nothing seemed to happen

Tech: Didn’t a plug and play wizard come up when you turned the computer back on?

Customer: I never turned the computer off

Tech: *alarmed* You never turned the computer off when you installed the nic?

Customer: No, was I supposed to? I just pulled the case off and stuck it in a open slit thingy *his words*

Tech: And this was all done with the computer up and running?

Customer: Yeah, was that a bad thing or something?

*Boy, some people simply amaze me.*

One of the things that always makes me want to choke the users is:

TECH: I need you to end any background programs.

USER: I've got nothing running in the background.

TECH: Let's just see

USER: I told you, I've got nothing running!

TECH: Please hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on your keyboard (Close program box opens). What do you see in there?

USER: (user rattles of programs)

TECH: Those are your background programs.

USER: How did those get in there? I didn't put them in there?

Another case of ID10T

Let me start out by admitting that I'm not in tech support like the rest of you. In this instance I was just a plain old customer who had a problem with his pager. I usually get two or three pages a day (min). Occassionally, I do go two or three blessed days with nothing though. Once, when this happened I get a call from a client asking me why I'm not at the job-site. She told me that she's been paging me for the last three days. Damn, I just lost a $150 bucks because of this. I call my pager and check my messages and there are two other messages on there from other clients saying that Sorry, since I didn't answer their page they had to call someone else for the gigs. Double Damn, now I'm out over a thousand bucks. I call my paging company Airtouch, and complain. Oh sorry sir, that happens sometimes. Well great, it just cost me over a thousand bucks, what are you going to do about it. Well, you can bring it in and exchange it for $25.00. What, $25 bucks? You want me to pay for a product from a company that ju

st cost me over a thousand bucks? Yes sir. %$#@&&* I said. I want to be re-imbursed (fat chance, but still one nevers knows).

Finally after spending an hour on the phone with her and her supervisor, I got the $25 exchange fee waived. Somehow I still feel as if I've been cheated.

(User) calls the help desk, complaining that the "little man" on her computer is watching her, and she wants it removed immediatly... We are all a little confused. After much questioning about the "little man" and assuring her that we are not watching her through her PC, she finally agrees that we can leave the "little man" on her Desktop.

After much discussion/laughing we figured out that we had just installed a remote control software which installs a animated icon in systray. This icon occasionally pops up, and the head rotates, and his glasses flash different colors.

She thought that we were keeping an eye on her while she was working.

By the way (user) that is a nice outfit you have on today...

I work for an ISP in Toronto. Many many callers have been worthy of appearing here and more might do so.

This customer calls up asking how to find his usage. Not a problem. I direct him to our webpage and how to get to memeber's services and he comes back with 'I was up there last week and it took me out to Richmond Hill'

*blink*

me: Nono, you have to go on the internet, not to our office. (I rattle off the instuctions on how to get to the webpage through IE)

c: But that takes me up around North York.

*blinkblink*

me, to stunned to think about laughing: No, you have to go onto the intenet and into your Internet Explorer.. (the instuctions yet again)

c: Oh, okay *click*

I really have to wonder if this person was actually looking for our street address by our web address..

ME:Okay so you don't have enough space to view your site on your hard drive, just delete some unessecary files and just to make sure, make backups of what you delete ...very wise.

Her:Cool...is that all Me: Yeah right!

Twenty minutes later...

Her:"I cannot see any of the fonts on my site and the client is coming over in minutes to view the site!"Just tears and a lot of yelling follow.She is so scared cause she is going to lose her job.Ever been nice to a client accidentally and they follow you for life?Yup one of those!Anyways, I try to calm her down and simply ask

ME:"What files did you delete?"ME:Knowing already

Her:"I deleted my Corel fonts..." SLowly it dawns on her...

ME:"And did you back them up to disk?"Being very patronising of course

Her:"YES!"

It takes all types....

I work as a Desktop Support Analyst for an insurance company and an employee called and wanted to know how to contact Microsoft to report a problem with Outlook. I explained that I have access to many resources at our Help Desk and I may be able to answer her question.

She said that everytime she clicked on the "X" in Outlook, it would close Outlook down completely and she could repeat this problem constantly. She also noticed that if she clicked on the "X" of an open e-mail, it did NOT close Outlook, it just closed the open e-mail. She continued and says she is not the only person experiencing this problem and wanted to report this "bug" and wanted a response from Microsoft on how to "fix" it.

After controlling my laughter and compsing myself, I politely explained that this is how most Windows based programs work and this is not a "bug". She was not budging on her theory that this problem needs to be resolved and Microsoft should fix it immediately.

I managed to point her to an Outlook User's Group/FAQ and will pray she does not call again, but judging from her previous call history with us, she will be back...

I was working for a government outfit

High Executive first day on the Job turns on PC in his desk

and can not log in,

I ask him for his name and password, and I can not get in

I get kind of puzzled, and call the network guys.

well it turn outs that he was using his password from where he was working before, and not the new password he was assigned.

A week later this same guy calls me and say he can not print, well it turns out that he was not connected to any printer. After setting him up for a network printer, he started complaining that his printing was not printing right. Well I think that it is kind of hard for a Monochrome printer to print in Color.

Yet again I get a call from this guy asking me why his internet was not working properly, I had a hard time explaining him that this government site only had an Intranet which is a closed system and no connection existed to the Internet.

After dealing with him and many others like him in that place, I decided I will never again work for a government agency.

I work at an entertainment software engineering company which shall, for the purposes of this article, remain unamed. Anyway, I was working as a Sr. Programmer in the AI department on this strategy game when I heard I had gotten a new "Assistant Programmer". Ugh... If theres one thing I hate its having to look after myself AND an assistant. Anyway, this guy shows up and I swear he has to be in his 80's... Yet again the company has hired an old fart to make themselves look better at PR meetings by not having a bunch of 20 year olds walk in. So, not wanting this guy to mess up anything that I was working on, I sent him off to work on a simple chunk of code I had written out in a flow chart which I handed him. All it had to do was some error checking for what I was writting. The flow chart I gave him basically said IF this is encountered, PRINT this message on the screen (I was assuming in a dialog box). Well, a few hours later the guy comes back with a floppy exclaiming that he was done... This seemed a bit fas

t for me so I slapped that disk in my computer and opened the sucker up to discover one file written in BASIC... Checker.BAS!

I work for a local ISP, and we have around 2000 customers.

One Monday morning after arriving into work I go to the Junk Food machine and get my daily dose of caffine.

Stopping to greet the secretary I ask how her day has been. "Very busy", she states. All the while I keep hearing ISP call on line *** over the intercom. I ask the sysop what all the calls are about, and come to find out our Billing Dept had gotten the Happy 99 Worm and sent it to every customer (UGH !!!)

I work at the same ISP as Z'Loth in several

capacities. In addition to technical support, not the least

of which, I am postmaster and primary abuse POC (Point Of

Contact), along with junior UNIX system administrator.

During the course of about a month, I had received several

reports of abusive behavior on IRC, notably attempted nuking (disabling

a Windows 95/NT (not 98) box due to Micrsoft's badly buggy (surprised?)

TCP/IP protocol stack).

I lined up all the IP addresses he'd used on our RADIUS server (the box

which handles dial-in authentication) logs to one account.

I managed to get in contact with the person in question about

his activities. At one point, singing like a songbird, he

outright TOLD me that he was "one-thirty-nining" (from TCP

port 139, the NetBIOS session port, through which NetBIOS traffic

flows for file and printer sharing on a LAN, also the vunlerable spot

in Microsoft's brain-damaged stack) his victims. I proceeded to

rip him a new one, telling him that launching denial-of-service

attacks, even if in self defense, is a VERY big-time no-no.

The conversation ended with his promising me that he would not do it

again.

Next night when I come onto my shift, I find--guess what--another

complaint. And AGAIN it lines up with him. After doing some time-zone

math, I find that he does this not two hours -AFTER- I get a promise

from him that he would never pull a crazy stunt like this again.

Hoo boy, would he EVER in for a big surprise.

The following morning, I received an e-mail from our main

upstream provider (which was a carbon-copy of what the complaintant

mailed to the abuse@ account)--just mere moments after I had

roasted the account in question (which was not his own, but

his mother's which she let her son (ab)use).

POSTSCRIPT: I left explicit instructions with technical support

that the person must call me about the events in question. He called

during the day when I was not on; he was deferred until that evening.

He has never called back since. I guess the dimwit does have some

brains after all--he knows he's crossed me.

Scary. I get paid to either make someone's life easier, or inflict

agonizing pain. This is nothing short of EXQUISITE payback.

*VERY evil grin*

It was a nice quiet Sunday afternoon when the phone rings. This was a simple call in which I had to do a simple callback in order to set up an additional e-mail only account. The guy (believe it or not) knew something about computers, so it was just a matter of settings....

Me: Okay, lemmie give you the mail server settings. The incoming mail server name is pop.nonesuch.net.

Customer: Okay.

Me: And, the outgoing server name is smtp.nonesuch.net...

Customer: Oh! Send Mail To People. That's what the network guy says at work!

Me: (!) Okay, let me write this down and pass it along to my fellow techs.

me: sir, what kind of computer do you have?

him: an hp

me: (needing to get to the bios)is that a kayak, or a pavilion, or what sir?

him: oh, I've got a 600 c.

me: umm, thats your computer, sir?

him: yep.

me: so you have a color computer?

him: sure do.

me: (wishing to move on) ok sir, lets restart the computer...

him: oh, wait....

Working for a Large PC Mfr doing tech support. Lady calls in, says her monitor is dying because it it making a crunching sound and a squeaking sound. Oddly enough, it only happens when she is online!? Since she only had one phone line, we couldn't duplicate it. After ten minutes of trying this n that, I finally realized that the user was an AOL moron, and the squeaking sound was an AOL loser friend coming online(door opening sound) and the crunching was the sound effect for them leaving(door closing sound).

This one's a little unusual, the shoe's on the other foot here!

I work for in a technical area of a large TV company in England. I was on the late shift a few months ago and at about 7:00 came back from my break. I couldn't log on to any of the PC's and all the other computers were playing up. I phoned our IT helpdesk....

Me: Hello I'm in the XXX, I think there migt be something wrong with the network.

Helpdesk: Yeah, we know about it, one of the major routers in the building has gone down, we're trying to fix it.

Me: Well, do you know when it will be working again?

Helpdesk: Don't know, might not be for some time, you'd may as well finish work for the day and go home.

Me: (Pause) Well thanks for that, but I don't actually finish until midnight!

Background: I work for a local ISP and we offer a 40% discount to all teachers in the area to encourage our educators to become familar with the internet in an attempt to reach our areas children. Our passwords have to be alfa and numeric, and 6-13 characters.

Story:

Teacher: Hi I am so and so from such and such Highschool. I heard you have a plan for teachers.

Me: Yes we do.

We begin to fill out the paperwork.

Me: No that you have selected an e-mail address you need to pick a password. It must alfa and numeric and at least 6 character long.

Teacher: Ok, how about "sparky", thats my dogs name.

Me: Sir, the password needs to be alfa and numeric. *thinking he will just add a year or other number I didn't feel the need to reiderate the 6 characters thing"

Teacher: OH!, (like its new information or something) Ok, umm how about "1959" thats the year I was born.

Me: Sir your password must be alfa AND numberic and at least 6 characters long.

Teacher: what does that mean?

AHHHHHHH!!!!, this pearson teaches HIGH SCHOOL!

I used to work TS at an electronic billpaying service. It was a while ago (Win95 was in beta when I quit), but this story sums up the level of user knowledge we had to deal with... This was at a time when DOS was still common enough, and there was no such thing as Plug and Play.

Tech: Thank you for calling *********, how can I help you?

User: I'm having trouble logging onto your system...

Tech: What operating system are you using?

User: What do you mean 'operating system'?

Tech: Do you have DOS or Windows? (Every DOS platform and WFW 3.11 was supported)

User: Well... I have windows on my house, and windows on my car, but I don't have windows on my computer... unless you mean this big piece of glass the pictures show up on...

I work for an international third party technical support company, supporting an ISP. I have heard some pretty silly things in my tenure there, but one of the calls i recieved today really takes the gold.

ME: Thanks for calling _____. My name is____. May I get your email address please?

Customer: I don't know what it is.

Me: Ok, what name do you use when you sign into ____?

Customer: Oh, okay, (then precedes to tell me)

I then explain to him that his email address is username@****.com.

Me: Ok, Sir, do you know what version of Windows you have on your machine?

Customer: Well, I supposed the most current one, 5.0.

Me:(choking under my breath) Ok, Sir, lets find the my computer icon on your desktop. (then explain to him what it looks like)

Customer: My screen is all black, I cannot see anything

Me: Are you sitting in front of your computer?

Customer: No, I am calling from my daughters house out of town.

Me: Sir, in order to help you , when need your computer available in front of you.

Customer: You mean i have to have my copmuter here with me to get my email?

After about 10 minutes of explaining to him that he must have a machine in order to recieve his email...

Customer: Can't you print it off the server and mail it too me?

This one just took the gold. After explaining to the customer that it was not possible to print his email off the server and mail it too him, He says, "Then what the **** am I paying for every month???" Then hangs up.

I work at a software help desk and we get all sorts of interesting calls about our program, but I thought some of you would appreciate, and perhaps identifiy with, this one. A user called and said her updates weren't processing and she couldn't enter her data. Our software processes the updates automatically when it is started up, but only if the correct .exe file is in the target line on the shortcut. So, this is the conversation that followed:

Me: O.K., let's exit the program and take a look at the target on the shortcut to make sure it's pointing to the right place.

User: {silent pause while program closes} O.K., my shortcut icon is pointing to the right.

Me: {after muting mic and banging my head on the desk}O.K., I want you to "right click" on the icon and select "properties".

I received a work order to "clean mouse balls". Although I

knew what the desired service was, I could not help but

envision holding down a very upset rodent and swabbing his

genitals with cleaning solution....

It was around 2:45 in the afternoon and I was working on an NT/9x policy issue that had been plaguing the campus network for quite some time before I got here. After printing out a tech net article and perusing it on the way back to my office, my boss says that he just got a call from the library about several computers going dead, and wants me to check it out. Normally this would really annoy me, because we cave tech that to things like this, but I was the only one around and I welcomed the break, from the lines and lines or registry code that I had been pouring over for a couple of days now. I show up over there and sure enough 3 machines in the center of the room are dead. Hmmmmmmm, no power, cables are plugged in well, hmmmmmm, power strip plugged in and cables plugged in to strip. I move a power cable to the next power strip in the row of machines. And hear the comforting “bwarrrow” of the monitor coming back to life magically. I tell the lady there that the power strip up and died and to swap it out with a new one. Back at the office in the safety of my little cave that no one dares enter, for fear of cancer from the blaring RF, the phone rings. Thinking that it would be my girlfriend calling to remind me of something that didn’t have to do with registries, tcp/ip WAN wrapper packets, or any of the other things that I actually care about, I pick up the phone.

[this was in blatant disregard of the 18 minute rule]

It’s the lady from the library, she inquired if I was going to come back over. I replied that I hadn’t planned on it. As it was only a power strip that needed replacing. She then stated that she required assistance, so stifling my laughter I head back over there. Upon arriving there she tells me that she needed help because she had never done anything like this before. I took the power strip and said that it’s just like plugging in a lamp. I proceeded to unplug all the power cables from the dead strip, unplug it and toss it in the trash and plug the new one in and hook all the power cables back up to it. And behold the Network Engineer had worked another miracle, thus saving the day again so the college students could again surf the web and send e-mail and run their online chat programs! All related to assignments in a class of some sort of course!

Brick Wall

magnum@ionet.net

MCSE, CNA, A+

Assisting a customer in installing a printer driver, the screen on her computer asked her to install disk one. There was a long silence, ask the customer how it was going and she was still trying to find a place to put the disk in. Explained to the customer to put the disk in the drive. She was trying to put the disk into the printer paper tray.

Finally, she got the disk into the drive, and it asked for the second disk and requested that she keep disk 3 handy. The next thing I hear is a loud banging noise coming through my headset. I, concerned, asked what the noise was. She seriously replied, "if it was going to ask for disk three, I was already going to already have it in so it would have to ask."

When our kids were small, my wife ran a day care center from our home. I was a computer hobbyist at the time and had a real nice Commodore 64 setup in the den; tape, disk drive, modem, printer, a Q-Link account, even a Z-80 card! The kids were encouraged to use the system for educational games and activities.

One day I was rearranging the system unit/keyboard on the desk and the screen went blank. I thought I detected a little bit of ozone in the air.

After checking everything I could think of, I finaly opened the case and found 29 paper clips and three hair pins inside.

Some small child had inserted them through the cooling slots in the bottom edge of the case. As soon as I moved the system box, the motherboard shorted and that was the end of that system.

The day care bought an IBM PC clone the next week!

An early call one morning:

Caller: The CD media you've supplied doesn't work

Us : What sort of problem are you encountering?

Caller: When I put the CDs in the drive, the drive doesn't recognise them.

Us : Ok, are you sure your writer's working correctly?

Caller: My writer?

Us : The drive you're writing the CDs with...?

Caller: Oh, I need one of those do I?

doh!

In my computer science class, a group of well dressed individuals came in and it seemed they were getting a tour of our computer dept. The guide seemed to be having diffculty working the mouse, she came to me and said "this mouse won't work" and she had it in her hand, so I said "ok lets see whats wrong", we went back and she started moving it around in the air, unplugged and claim it didn't work! I said "oh I see the problem it is an ID 10 T problem", she said "oh something technical", I just replied "yeah." ID10T

I work for a fairly large ISP and received today (Friday - this will be important later) what has to be

just about the wierdest call I've ever gotten.

The problem: The customer's roomates had all been using her dialup

account - since the house had only one phone line, it was pointless

for them to pay for multiple dialup accounts. Well, one of her roomates

had left her computer connected and went home for the weekend, with the modem

properties set to auto-redial when the connection got dropped (idle timeouts, too), thus

tying up the house's only phone line. Normally, this would be a simple matter

of disconnecting the computer and turning off auto redial. In this case, however,

the computer in question was in a LOCKED BEDROOM and her roomate wouldn't be returning

until Sunday evening, which is why she had to call me from a neighbor's house.

The resolution: Changed the user's password and kicked the offending machine from the Portmaster.

Oops, my last post (the auto-redialing computer in the locked bedroom) WASN'T the wierdest call

that I've ever taken. This one was:

(With 24/7 tech support, our Operator/Front Desk extension gets transferred to a phone in the Tech Support department after normal

business hours.)

*Note: Our company name doesn't sound anything REMOTELY like a motel name.

Me: (ISP Name) Front Desk, how may I direct your call?

C: (ISP Name)?? Is this a motel?

Me: No. This is an Internet Service Provider.

C: Oh, good. I need (ISP Name) technical support.

Me: Hold on, let me transferr you. (transfer & laugh)

I guess the 'Front Desk' part may have thrown her off, but she DID pick the

Front Desk extension from the phone menu.

I work as ARSE (absolutely responsible for sodding everything) for an ISP in the UK. At present I mainly handle tech support calls. I've done this for several companies and also work freelance but this one type of conversation crops up time after time - i'm sure all tech's feel that their company just gets the idiot users and that XYZ company get's the ones that understand.

ME: Hello Helpdesk, **** speaking.

USER: I Can't access the internet

ME: Okay, does your computer dial-up okay?

USER: No, it says that the modem isn't working

ME: Right, lets check some settings

USER: Great

ME: Close all your programs so you can just see the desktop

USER: [Click Click Click] Done

ME: Great, we're going to see if there is a problem with the device settings, right-click on "My Computer"

USER: [Click] Nothing happening

ME: Put the mouse cursor over the "My Computer" icon and press the right-mouse button, do you see a menu next to the mouse cursor?

USER: [Pause, Click] Done that still nothing happening.

ME: No Menu?

USER: No

ME: [Stuck but had enough ocurrences of this type of call] Does the icon turn a different colour?

USER: Yes

ME: [Realising stupidity of user] The mouse has two buttons on it, a left and a right, which one are you pressing?

USER: The left one, oh, I thought you meant press the right (as in correct) mouse button!

ME: [Mute] AAAAARRRRRRGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I am sure we've all had this type of call before.

Where I work, the SysAdmin moved on to another job, and a replacement was found. The new guy (lets call him "Bob") seemed OK, if nervous. He chatters constantly (especially when nervous) which is no big deal.....except for the fact that he is always nervous, doesn't use common sense, and misses the most obvious things.

In the building we use magnetic locks to seal doors in sensitive areas, which includes the server room, and the phone switch/workbench area. Bob had been working for a couple weeks, and been in and out of the server and switch rooms daily. To enter the room, you slide a magnetic "keycard" on a plate to open the door, which unseals the mag-seal. I was working on a PC in the back, when "Bob" wandered in, grabbed something and then went to leave the room. Now to EXIT the room, instead of using a cardkey, you just stand in from of the door, so the motion sensor on the inside can unlock the door for you. Sometimes (because motion sensors are not always perfect) you have to wait a second and move again.

Now Bob had walked up to the door, and the motion sensor didn't detect him (as he walked up from the side instead of the front of the door). Naturally, the door doesn't open. Bob then grabs the handle, and starts frantically yanking on the doorknob, then finally puts his foot on the frame and almost stands on the wall pulling at the door.

Now this happens not on the first few uses of the door, but after DOZENS of uses!

Me and the other guy in the back started telling him to relax and how to open the door. I explained the concept to him, of how from the inside you just walk up (and watch for the green light), which means the door is open. Bob then asks why we don't need a key to get out, because the room would not be secure!

Apparently anyone who gets IN the room should be held prisioner.....

After all this Bob was witnessed stuck again...this time in the server room while people from one of the other departments watched through the big glass window. From what I hear they got a pretty good laugh....

-Fat Monkey

I do technical repair work. Got call that a piece of equipment is not operating correctly. I am un-familiar with this piece, but operator shows me what is happening, and it does in fact not work the way operator says it should. Called factory, informed them that I am not certain of operations, but operator has been using it for XX years. Tech fellow says operator not operating system correctly. I get information, go to another unit and verify that: A. operator was in error; B. System works fine when proper operational proceedure is followed.

So, I go back to operator and break it to him/her that he/she is not operating gear correctly, and show him/her the proper proceedure, and it works correctly. Operator says: "It should work the way I did it. Call factory, have them change the software to do it my way....."

I took a long lunch that day..

A member called in complaining that she couldnt launch our program A****** O***** due to low hard disk space. On checking the ammount of free space on her computer, we found she had 27 MB free on a 4.0 GB hard drive. On going into her C: drive, she had 129 copies of our software installed on her computer. Forty minutes later and MUCH deletion, we finally got the 2.67 GB of space being used by our software freed and she now has one copy of the software and will not be trying to run the program from her CD.

I was sitting on my bench, hard at work on my computer when the intercom barks "Teck call line 1".

I pick up the phone and the voice on the other side says "Hi this is (-name here-) and i just got my computer back from you and it seems to be working fine, but their seems to be two files in the my computer. are they supposed to be their?"

"ok, so what are they called?" i repply.

"Well i cant read what they say they are too small"

Suspecting poor eyesight for his inability to read the file names i say "ok, rightclick in the My Computer area and select View and then Large Icons."

"Well, it only gives me Open and Explore", he says in a worried tone.

"ok, i say first double click the my computer icon, then rightclick in the My Computer area, select view then click large icons. now, read off the icon names that it shows."i reply. he reads off the drivea and the normal folders that should be there without mentioning the two files. and i ask, "now can you read me the names of those two files?"

He replies, "no they are still too small."

I close the my computer window on my computer and notice that the my computer icon, being a computer, monitor, and keyboard, looks like it has a file open and i ask "sir, are thease files in the my computer area or is it on the icon?"

"On the icon,"he replies" i hope they arent taking up too much memory!"

I work at a desk that supports all sorts of software (some of it proprietary). This was an actual call:

U: Hello, my name is **** I have an open case

M: Ok. And what is the case number?

U: I don't remember

M: Ok. When did you call in

U: Saturday Night

M: Do you remember who you talked to?

U: It was a young lady

I searched for the case by account id, user first name, date... I could not find the case. I decided to start a new one:

M: I'm going to start a new case for you. What was your issue?

U: My what?

M: Your issue (uncomfortble silence). What was the initial purpose of your call? (more silence). What problem were you having with your computer?

U: They told me to install the July CD. I need to know if I should install the ** CD or the **.

(The package she needs to install would depend on the problem she's having. There are several packages on both CDs).

M: Well, what was happening with your machine when they told you you needed to install the CD?

U: They just told me to install it.

M: Yes but, when you called in and the other tech told you to have the CDs, what was wrong with your machine then? (silence) What wasn't working? (silence). What were you having problems with? (silence) What was broken on your machine when you called in on Saturday?

U: If I had the case number I could give it to you and you could look it up and you could tell me.

Ohhhh kay...

I work at a nice midwestern USA ISP. Sometimes, even though I really don't have to, I'll help a luser with various questions that don't relate to their Internet accounts, as long as 1) the answer doesn't require any research, and 2) I'm bored and there's nothing better to do.

The tale begins on a Saturday, when I've read every single article on Slashdot and various humor sites. The phone rang, and:

Me: "$ISP tech support, may I have your username?"

User: "I only have 2 MB (pronounced emm-bee) left. What should I delete?"

Me: (slightly irritated at the rude beginning) "I can't help you with that."

User: "Well, now what?"

Me: "Go to $STORE and buy a new hard drive, but DON'T just go around deleting files!"

User: "How do I install it?"

Me: "It should have a nice manual with pictures and all, but ask $STORE[0] if you have any problems."

Honestly, these calls are fairly common. I guess people figure that hey, tech support is tech support, so we should be able to help with everything. I'd forgotten about it until Monday night:

Me: "$ISP tech support, this is..."

User: "I bought some memory for my computer and it doesn't fit anywhere. Where does it go?"

Me: "Didn't I talk to you Saturday?"

User: "Yeah, well, I went and bought some memory. It's a PC-100 128 emm-bee DRAM. Where does it go?"

Me: (thinking: if he's out of drive space, it's probably an older computer with a small HD) "Umm, how old is your computer?"

User: "About five years."

Me: "Why don't you take it back to $STORE, get your refund, and use it buy a bigger hard drive?"

User: "Because I bought it at $OTHER_STORE[1], that's why. What if I buy a SIMM instead?"

For the money he'd dropped on that memory, which was of absolutely zero use to his computer, he could've had a nice, big, fast hard drive. I almost wish he'd call back so I could change my recommendation to a Zip drive[2].

[0] Big national chain. Not exactly high-grade, but a friendly enough return policy.

[1] Slightly smaller national chain that charges a 15% restocking fee on *all* returns.

[2] Just because it's slower, more expensive per megabyte, and a lot less convenient to run a swap file on. :)

I do software support for a shipping company. Maybe you've seen the trucks (y'know, the big brown ones?).

Anyway, on my third day on the job, I got a call from a guy claiming a screw had fallen out of the back of his PC and he wanted a techincian to come out there ASAP and put it back.

I asked him "Do you still have the screw?"

He replied, "Yeah ... "

Me: (as innocently as possible) "Have you tried putting it back in?"

This was the point where the caller descended into all sorts of lovely profanity and refused any further troubleshooting. I ended up sending a field tech out (who, I'm sure, was overjoyed).

There was another call from a *custom* computer company down south of the Mason-Dixon line somewhere. This guy was in a total panic, i.e. the about to have a heart attack kind.

Caller: "I don't know what I did in your X software, but now I'm in a black screen with a flashing cursor at the top and a c-colon-backslash!"

Me: (takes a moment or three for caller's problems to sink in versus what they do at their company) "Have you tried typing W-I-N?"

Caller: (Estatic) "Hey it worked!"

A third call:

Caller: "I'm trying to send a package to Korea, but I can't find it in the country codes!"

Me: "Are you sending it to North or South Korea?"

Caller: "There's a North and South Korea?"

Me: (stifling a sigh) "Where are you sending it to in Korea?"

Caller: "Seoul. That's in North Korea, right?"

Me: (Oh God I hope that hasn't happened since I last checked current events) "Seoul is in South Korea. We don't ship to North Korea."

Caller: "Why not?"

Me: "Economic embargo, political reasons."

Caller: "What?"

Me: "We don't ship there."

In my spare time I volunteer with an online tech support site. I don't usually like to laugh at users, because we all had to start somewhere. But every so often, you just have to wonder how they even managed to get to the site to ask...

This is a transcript of the email communication between me and a customer:

Customer:

Can you give me a description of what a download is and how to accomplish one.I have FUJIFILM 2HD

highdensity 3.5 floppydiscs IBM formatted. Thank You S kuttner If this is less information than

you need to answer the question,please be intensly specific when you request more. thanks

Me:

A download is when you transfer a file from a remote device (computer, digital camera, etc.) to your

own computer's hard drive.

You ask how to accomplish one. Well, what exactly are you trying to download? Examples of things

that can be downloaded are game files, shareware utilities, etc. from the Web, digital pictures from

a digital camera. Most web sites that have files to download work this way: you click on a link of

the file you want. A dialog box comes up on your screen asking where you want to save to. You pick a

location on your hard drive, and then click OK or Save. When the file has finished transferring, you

can double-click on it to start the installer/setup of the program.

Customer:

Thank you for the quick response. Before I give you something

specific to download please answer a few questions for me. does it have to

download to my hard drive? Can it just be down loaded to a floppy or can you

even load anything on a floppy. I guess what I'm trying to ask is, "what is a

hard drive, what is a floppy and its function?

Me:

OK, in order:

1. No, you don't have to download to your hard drive. You can download

to a floppy if the files are small enough to fit on the floppy.

2. A hard drive is the actual memory space on your computer. If you're

working in a word processor, and you save a file, by default it goes

somewhere on your hard drive, unless you tell it otherwise. If you go

into Windows Explorer (Start/Programs/Windows Explorer), the pane on the

left should show you several drives - a, which is your floppy drive; c,

which is your hard drive; and (usually) d, if you have a CD-ROM drive.

Most hard drives have more than 200 megabytes of storage space, and some

of the newer computers come with 9-10 gigabytes of space (1 gig is 1000

megs). A floppy is a portable disk that you can use with any computer

that has a floppy drive. The disks only hold 1.44 megs (standard).

Customer:

I don't think I have a hard drive. Can I download the whole Internet to my floppy?

AARGH!

We have a tech rep who works mostly with the company

mainframe. She was getting an older computer to take

home with her and she asked if she could take her old

keyboard with her. When I asked why she replied, "I have

that keyboard mapped just the way I like it."

Cust: Hi, I'm getting really offensive advertisements in my mailbox, can you please stop them?

Me: Sir all we can do it try and block them. Go ahead and send a copy with headers to xxxxxxxxxx and we'll see what we can do.

C: I'm a minister and I just can't have this kind of mail coming in, can't you just change a setting and get me off this list?

M: No, sir, we do not monitor our customers mai...

C: [Begin scare tactic #1] Well maybe I can find another company that is willing to help me out in this.

[Enter 5 minutes of explaining what spam is]

C: So how did I get on this "list" anyway?

M: Well, sir, have you entered your email on any sites recently, to buy something or get a mailing list?

C: (uncomfortable) Well, only once, but I didn't know what it was until after I put it is (really fast now) But I mean that shouldn't have done this now listen I just want this to stop coming in, is there anything you can do? I mean what if my wife sees this?!

[chuckle, I know what's coming...]

M: Well, what website did you put your email on? Perhaps we can contact them or their provider and place some action on their account?

C: I really think that's a personal question. Can you just stop this mail?

M: Not without knowing where it's from, as I said, just send it to xxxxxx and we can try and block it.

C: (sigh) (long pause) (whisper) Oh God... (/whisper) Ok, what was that address?

Well, I saw it come in... Guy had reason to be ashamed, it was a true opt-in list from a certain brand of website ... well, I'm sure you can guess by now, can't you? );) We got him off the list and apparently he was happy ... until they sent a confimation letter that his wife saw... But that's a whole other story.

I am not actually a support tech, but I do help my friends a lot with their computers when things go wrong or when they need to know how to do something.

While showing one particular friend how to use his new scanner, I decided to try scanning some text and reading it into a document with OCR. Unfortunately, the OCR software seemed to be having problems and usually locked up while reading the document.

When I mentioned this problem to my friend, he asked "Isn't that document you're scanning already on the hard disk?" I said yes, in fact I had printed it from the word processor and was just trying to re-scan it for the demonstration. He responded: "Try using a document which isn't on the disk. The problem is since it's already on the hard disk and you're trying to scan it in, it's conflicting with the other copy in memory."

I have heard some strange explanations for some strange problems, but this one struck me as particularly doubtful.

A Co-Worker and good friend of mine told me about a tech

support call he once took... A guy (we'll call him joe) -

called in to Tech Support. He complained that every time

he tried to set the CD in the tray of his CD-ROM drive, it

would fall through and land on the desk. It turns out that

the guy had taken a Dremel tool and used it to saw out the

bottom of his CD-ROM drive's tray - to make it hold a

Big Gulp.

A user recently upgraded to a new system. She called and stated that her disk drive was jammed. Apparently even the little eject button wouldnt work. We asked what happened and for her to tell us the story step by step.

She had some important files on her old computer and was in the process of transfering some spreadsheets to her new coputer. However, her new computer had olny the 5 1/4 disk drives, while her new computer had only the 3 1/5 drives.

Undaunted by this minor set back she proceded to fold the old disk, and jam it into the new drive. Needless to say, the drive was henceforth jammed, and she had to have a tech come to her house, and not olny disasemble her computer, but aslo her floppy drive.

I never knew whether to believe tech stories or not until one day working on a helpdesk for a large British retail company I had this call. It went something like this.

Me: Hello your through ********** my name’s Mike how may I help

Her: My Machine keeps skipping programs can you help?

Me: What is that make and model of the machine? (The retailer sold lots of different makes of PC among other things)

Her: I’m not sure how would I tell?

Me: Normally the make and model is written on the front of the machine, can you see a name?

Her: No I can’t see anything

Me: Ok that’s not a problem. What do you see on the monitor when you turn your PC on?

Her: What’s a monitor? I just have dials

Me: This is a computer? Isn’t it?

Her: No it’s a washing machine.

The retailer also sold various household electrical goods. The lady had come through to the technical support line even though there were lots of warnings, which also gave her the correct number to ring for her washing machine. I redirected her to the correct number but she wouldn't get off the line because she had to wait for 30 mins before she spoke to me and insisted there must be someone that could help her.

A woman in my department called me saying her pc was broken,

all of a sudden she couldn't type in any data nad had no clue why.

I looked at it and saw her keyboard wasn't working and got

a new one for her. When I picked up her old keyboard

orange juice dumped out of it onto the floor.

She said "I thought I got all of that up"

(you have to understand there was a lot of juice!)

then she asked if that would have caused the problem.

I work at a private college in the networking department and handle everything from students not being able to connect to the internet to computer viruses.

The other day I got this call from a girl who had the Happy 99 Worm. WHEW!!! This was going to be easy. This worm had gone around campus last year and I spent a lot of my time talking the students and administrators through the process of removing the worm.

I have this student look for all the SKA files and delete the appropriate ones. I then told her to restart in MS-DOS mode and change to the system directory. I told her which file to delete and which file to rename and then told her the virus was gone and she would be fine. The call was ended and I hung up.

About five minutes later she called back and said she is getting an error now. Windows could not find the wsock32.dll file it needed. AAARRRGGGHHH!!! I asked her what she renamed the wsock32.ska file to. She said she had no idea. ;[ I thought she MUST HAVE got the 'DLL' part right when she renamed it, I had her get a directory listing of the DLL files ion her system directory. 639 files! Yikes! Then I had her get a listing of all the W*.DLL files ... 55 files!

I did not want to go through all 55 files so I thought I would just have her share her system directory so that i could take a look. Sure enough, there sitting in the system directory was the culprit file: wosck32.dll. ;]

I got a summer job working at a smallish local ISP over the summer, basically doing sysadmin and tech support. We get a very interesting range of calls, but this one has to be the best.

One day, an old sounding customer called up wanting to set up his computer to connect to the net. He already had paid and gotten an information sheet from us, so I told him to enter the phone number as it appeared on the sheet. The rest of the call seemed to go okay, and he hung up so he could redial, as he only had one phone line.

About 10 seconds later, I pick up the phone and hear the *bweeeeeeep* of a modem. You can see where this is going. So the guy calls back...

(me) Good afternoon, ***** Internet, this is Ryan.

(him) Yeah, I was talking to you a minute ago.. it didn't work.

(me) What phone number did you enter?

(him) Let me see... (it's our tech support number, which isn't even on the same area code as our modem banks and is clearly separated from the modem numbers on the info sheets.)

(me) okay, here's the number you SHOULD have...

God I love tech support.

User: My username is camy@myisp.net but my mail server says mail.myisp.net...it should be my server! How do I change it?

Tech:No ma'am...your server for mail is mail.myisp.net.

User: Not mine! Mine is for camy!

Tech: no ma'am....everyone in the entire ISP use the same mail server. You simply access the portion for your account only.

User: Well, that is stupid, now everyone can read my mail!

Today while supplying the usual telephone support for our online trading site.........

Caller: DUH

ME: hUH? (oh my god not another one)

Caller: Duh, Duh, Duh!

mE: huh huh huh?

Caller: Duhhhhhhh!!!!

Me: @#%$@#%@!! Where are you right now?

Me: Hold on, walk out to the desk where the caller is, pick up the monitor and smash it over their head repeatedly.

Sorry, its nice to fantasize once in a while..........

I work on helpdesk for a large retail company and recieved a call the other day that just cracked me up.

We'd just rolled out a new computer system that utilized hand scanners for inventory control and the manager of one of our branches called up to say none of his products would register on his scanner. I asked him to head into the store, scan something and come back and tell me about the error message he was getting.

I wait for about a minute then hear him speaking really faintly for a few seconds then saying "Hello? Hello.....#$@*!!"

He then comes back on the line highly embarrassed explaining that he'd picked up the scanner cradle and was talking into that!

I valiantly resisted dissolving into laughter and managed to resolve his issue.

A while ago I was doing some work for a national company

that has many deals with horticultural studies and needed

their computers changed/upgraded from win3.*/9* to WinNT.

The job involved mainly being a button monkey, basicaly the

job involved working on the machine between an alocated time

defined by either the big nobs or the user. All I had to do

was stick a disk in, answer questions, and watch it backup

the data in the c:\data directory, format, and then install

NT from across the network.

We had a backup server with an 80gb RAID array, so no

worries about space, these people only use documents and

spread sheets localy, anything big was stored on the network

file server and edited directly . . . . or so we thought.

The directions for the employees were simple:

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

blah blah blah blah

list of programs that are going to be re-installed

blah blah blah

"Move all of the data that you need to keep, that has been

stored on on your C:\ drive, to a directory that has been

created for you called c:\data. this data will be

restored to your computer when the update has been completed"

blah blah blah

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

I was running around starting machines backing up and I

hadn't gone back to the first PC yet, when I noticed that

the RAID array was about 80% full!!. I checked the first

PC I started . . . it was still (60 mins later) backing up!,

I checked the next pc . . .still backing up as well. So I

ls'ed the user directory on the backup server and there was

about 5 files in everyones backup that were the same. and

they were BIG.

So I asked an employee that was walking around, if blah,

blah, blah, blah or blah filename had any significant

meaning to him?

Emp = Employee

Emp: Yeah, that ones the database we use, and that ones

blah blah blah and blah, why?

Me: Right, ummm, and where are they kept normaly??

Emp: on E:\ drive

Me: . . ........

As it turns out, a lot of people thought that a network

was a physical drive and moved anything that was on the

network to the c:\data directory.

So I did a recursive rm on the backup server for anything

with the blah filename and cleaned about 60% of the data.

Then I thought I might browse some of the data backed up to

see what other data they might be "wanting to keep".

I found system.ini's with nearly the entire windows directory

about 40 odd times, MS Office, corel, and a conglomeration

of MS products that were going to be re-installed on their

new machines anyway when done. . ..

Later that day my colege and I met the same employee trying to read

some e-mail on his newly re-installed machine (all his settnigs

had been set, all he had to do was hit "Get Mail") which he was

doing just fine by himself. But he seemed to be having trouble

actualy READING them. Everyime he click on a mail he recieved

to read it, it would disapear from the list, and no email would

be displayed.

Emp: Whenever I click on them, they disapear!!

*Taking a look I can see that when he clicks on them, they move to

the TOP of the list, therefore "disapearing" from the user

and he hs the display window (Like Netscape Mail) had been

minimised. I decided to play*

Me: That is a new feature, it's called Delete BEFORE read.

Emp: Scared, Bewildered Look (Absolutely Priceless)

*My colege noticed how this new feature worked, and started PISSING

himself laughing I too, was not far behind*

I reached over and used his mouse to click on the minimised window frame

MAGICALY his email appeared. Thankfully he got the joke and

laughed also.

Looking back, It was a hell of a risky joke, but god damn, the look

on his face was priceless.

Yet another call came in from the excutive floor. This time the new President's secretary couldn't print, after she'd been correctly setup. And of course the copier functions of the new printer/copier still worked. Hm, ah hah, found it! Rather than move the stack of paper so the wastebasket would be out of the way, someone simply pushed the wastebasket with the shredder harder against the wall, not noticing that the network connection for the printer/copier to the wall jack was making cracking noises. Told them when the network people came in the next morning it would be fixed when they had time. Rerouted the lady to another printer across the floor then rec'd a call from her asking why her print jobs were coming out at the other printer. Politely told her (again)that was the only fix until morning. Also told my managers to cover my back. Went home thankful day was over and pager was out for repair.

True story from a large company in Ireland.

Bloke's having a problem with his modem and he rings the tech line.

So he gets the tech support guy and eventually the tech figures out the modem is not installed properly. So he asks the bloke to get his Win95 CD and place it in the drive.

So the guy then says, well then we got a problem I don't have a CD drive. The tech has all the computer specs in front of him and and there is a CD drive. So he tells the guy to go look on the front of the PC for the button to open the drive.

No luck the guy can find the button for the floppy but that's it. So after about 10 min of doublechecking, the tech has the brainstorm and he has the guy open the CD player and click eject.

Lo and behold the CD drive opens, but all the tech gets is, yeah now the coffee-cup holder is open.

So the tech replies, well your right we have a problem, you'll have to re-pack your computer and take it back to us, just drop it off and tell the person on the desk your too stupid to own a computer.

Suffice it to say the tech is no longer with the company

One thing I notice when I troubleshooting the printers at our Tech Desk the things that never occur to the customer.

ME: Is the light on the Printer?

Customer: No

Me: Is it plugged in?

Customer: Yeah it is.

Me: OK, now flip the power switch in the back of the printer. Does the Light come on?

Customer: No.

ME: Unplug the power supply to the printer please.

Customer: The cable that goes to the computer from the Printer?

ME: No the one that goes to the Power outlet.

Customer: there is just the one to the computer

ME: where is the one that goes to the power outlet?

Customer: never had one

ME: How else would you get power to the printer?

Customer: From the computer like always. Do I need a power supply?

It's bad enough to have customers call you after working hours with something stupid, but when your buddy calls you up with something dumb, it sends me orbital. My bud calls me up with a printer driver problem on Windows 95 ( of course after 10:00 p.m.) and this is how our conversation went:

Me: " Okay, can you click on My Computer?"

bud: "Yours?"

Me: "No dude, the icon in the top left corner."

bud "OK"

Me: " Go into the Printer's folder. See anything?"

bud "Just add new printer."

Me: "Click that and follow directions".

bud: "Ok"

Well, after that, he says that it can't find the right driver for his printer. I ask him if it came with a cd for installation and he said yes. So I have him put it in and run the Setup.exe. Now here is where I wanted to shoot him:

Me: "Ok, click the setup icon"

bud: " Huh?"

Me: "That's that little computer picture dude. Click it."

bud: "Ok Some liscense areement popped up"

Me: "Just click accept at that screen."

bud " Oh, Am I supposed to agree? I kept clicking no."

Me: "You did this already? What the @#@ are you calling me for then?"

bud: "I thought I didn't need this software, so I declined."

After he clicked the accept button, the printer installed itself. The scary part is he is a tech also.

I work for a large outsourcer in a call center that handles several contracts.

Here are some of my stories, followed by a nice tale proving you don't need to be within 3,000 miles of somebody to be a hero.

Story One (or, How I Learned to Love Myself):

Young Teenaged Boy calling: "My Mom's going to be home soon, what's the best way to clean off my keyboard."

WHOOPS! Johnny was a little to quick on the trigger, it seems.

Story Two (or, My Computer Is Posessed!):

Christian-Oriented Internet is becoming more and more common these days.

We handle one such contract.

The context of the call isn't all that important, but the subject is funny.

YOU try explaining to somebody who wants Christian I-net why they don't need to call an excorsist for DUN error 666 and port daemons.

Story Three (or, 24GB or Bust):

A lady called up complaining that she couldn't surf the web.

A quick diagnosis of the problem led to the fact that she had a few K of HD space left, not nearly enough for Netscape to cache properly.

Well, then, I said, let's find some stuff we can delete...

Off throught he directories we go, only to stumble open things with such file names as "amber69.jpg"

(I originally deduced the pr0n syndrome from the fact that once coming across "[so many objects], [so much disk space taken]"

the conversation quickly became, on her end, "Oh, what's this one... oh... oh my... this one? Oh, dear me...."

We promptly deleted the offending material (click the first one, shift click the last one, poke that delete key, empty the bin, and voila, happy surfing Ma'am.)

anyways. This call doesn't get funny until the husband's, er, rebuttal to our duties.

Husband: "High, my wife just called, about 20 minutes ago, you delete... errrr... some files with her?"

Me: "Yes, that's right."

Husband: "I just want you to know, you took away my reason to live."

Well then.

Story Four (or, I Want it Hand-Delivered!):

On top of doing tech support, we also handle some sales calls. Here's one such call, word-for-word (forever etched in my memory...)

Caller: "Hey man I thought your CD was free."

Me: "Yes, that's right. The CD is free. However there IS a $3.50 charge for the shipping and handling."

Caller: "Three dollars and fifty cents?! WHAT, IS IT HAND DELIVERED?!"

Me: "No, we send it priority mail."

Caller: "Oh, okay thanks loser."

*click*

I'll hand deliver you to hell, mofo.

Story Five (or, AOL, GO TO HELL!):

Caller calls up. Can't get online with us.

Me: "Did you recently install any new software? Especially AOL 5.0?"

(for those techies who don't know, beware AOL 5.0! It causes even worse conflicts with everything than any other AOL.

It installs all sorts of generic modem drivers only IT recognizes, conveniently giving them the same name as your old one,

sits like the good little Third Reich ISP it is smack dab in about 84,234,987,234,125,280,184 lines of registry code, etc., etc.)

Caller: "Yes, I did install AOL 5.0. Oh, and I set it as my default, if that helps."

Actually, that DOESN'T help. It makes the situation exponential WORSE.

Me: "Okay, you're going to need to call AOL technical support. AOL causes alot of problems with our software (read: everything). Ask them to uninstall it completely. There's 42 steps to it. Also, if you'd like to keep AOL, you can have them downgrade you."

(we tell them we don't the 57 billion steps it takes to uninstall AOL, when in fact we do. The fact of the matter is, AOL would just like to have a legal reason to keep billing their poor, naive customers for every penny, and have given us explicit instructions

that we have ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to fix what they break.)

Caller: "Oh, okay, I'll do that then."

About 45 minutes passes, and this gentleman calls back. He was getting a modem error (error 635, which AOL 5.0 kindly causes thanks to those generic drivers I mentioned earlier)

This is what makes me love AOL so much...

Caller: "Oh, I think I just spoke with you about half an hour ago. I called AOL, and they said they couldn't help me, because I don't use a modem to connect to AOL, they told me I use TCP/IP"

I explained in lengthy detail the technical info of it all, making sure he had a pen handy so he could blast AOL when he called them back.

I seriously think AOL customer need to reach around and remove the penis from their asses, because they're getting f***ed royally.

Story Six (or, Why Can't HTML and EXE Be the Same Thing?):

I got a call from a complete moron a while back, and it turns out our software won't work on his system because of his chipset.

(It only works on Authentic AMD or Genuine Intel architecture, for some reason)

Anyways, we frequently redirect those calls to a website that has a program to "fool" your OS into thinking it's running off a genuine Intel.

Knowing that users' brain cells frequently don't function on the level that they should, I give them the exact URL of the file (the executable, that is to say) itself.

Anyways, I give this URL to this guy, tell him we can't support him with the software because it's third party, take an extra 15 minutes then explaining to him what third party software is

and why we don't support it, and send him on his merry way.

I knew he was a few bricks short of a load, but nothing this bad until he called me back about a week later.

Caller: "Yiah, last week I spoke with Timothy," (which is interesting because that is not my name, nor does my name sound remotely like Timothy), "and he directed me here (gives me website)"

Meanwhile, I've opened his call log, and see that "Timothy" did not in fact get this guy, which would have been even harder because we don't even have a Timothy working in the call center, but rather,

I got him.

I was about to tell him we don't support third party software, but this really piqued my interest, so I bit.

Me: "Okay, so what's the problem?"

Caller: "Well, I went where Timothy told me, and I downloaded the file to a floppy diskette, and when I double click on it to download from diskette to hard diskette, all I get is question marks and writing."

At this point I'm fairly certain this was one child who had paint chips mixed in with his pabellum.

So, I have him go to the a: drive and double click the file, to see what it does.

Lo and behold, it opens Netscape. I had him read the URL in netscape, and I check it against the URL I gave him, just to be sure it wasn't an error on my fault.

Aside from the "local" information in the URL, which I knew would of course present a discrepancy, only the www.[whatever].com is right.

He managed to go to the html page one level BEFORE the file, and then went to file, save as... and saved the HTML code to disk.

How you can leave out an entire /[whatever].exe, not notice the missing dialog box, and then save an HTML file to disk, I don't know. But he pulled it off.

I spent ten minutes trying to explain what he did wrong. I finally said, "You have the right URL, go there. There are other calls in queue more important than an unsupport issue," and I hung up. Why isn't euthanasia legal?

And this sobering thought...

One time, a tech got a call from a lady with a domineering husband she was planning on leaving.

She didn't want him to know that she had been using his connection to find a job (to secure some coin before she filed for divorce, very smart lady)

but she wasn't all that skilled on computers. Thankfully, the tech knew just what to do.

He cleared the cache, and had her write down all her husbands sites in the address bar.

He cleared the history, and then had her go to all the sites of her husbands again, so it looked like just he had been using it.

Unfortunately, he came home when she was just powering off the computer, so she left the phone just slightly sitting off the cradle, so it looked hung up but wasn't.

The tech listened. What he heard amazed him. How some people with that kind of mouth towards their wives can live with themselves is beyond me.

He was calling her a b*tch, a sl*t, saying if she ever used his f-ing computer again he was going to kill her, etc., etc.

She was crying, of course, and the tech only took a few seconds before he reacted.

He flagged the call to be monitored by the supervisor. While the super listened in, he looked up her information, slipped into line two on the phone, and dialled 911.

He informed them of what was going on, and 911 local put him through to 911 for her area. He gave them the lo down and had the supe patch the call through to another 911 operator as he read off the info.

Cops showed up pretty quick.

Just goes to show, you don't need to be in uniform, or even within 3,000 miles, to be somebody's hero.

I got alot of respect for that tech.

You hear some of these tales, and you'd swear they were Urban Legend, but not this one. I'll not tell you my sister-in-law's name to protect the "innocent".

Shortly after my sister-in-law purchased a new color scanner, I received a photo of my niece from my sister-in-law. The photograph was in black and white, and was quite sharp and detailed. The only exception was that there were some scratchings in the upper left corner of the photograph.

I asked my sister-in-law if she had scanned the photograph in color, and she said she had tried, but the photo came through in black in white, so she tried coloring it.... hence the scratchings in the upper left corner.

I'm wondering if there are crayon marks on the monitor... :)

I work in a call center that does tech support for a variety of ISP's. One day I received a call where the user could not connect. this is how the call went....

Tech)Helo thanx you for calling ....... My name is Blair, how may I help you?

User)I can't connect

Tech) ok sir and may I have you username..

User) yeah it's dogman

Tech) ok sir and whe did this sart?

User) well it all started when I try to connect... I just can't

ok sir and how do you go about connecting?

User) I don't know, I thought that Y'All would just tell me how to do it..

Tech) ok sir we can what version of Windows are you using?

User)I'm Usin' Windows 98 Second Edition.. now where Y'ALL from you talk funny

Tech) Well sir we are located in Ottawa Canada..

User) Oh... that is odd doin' tech spport for an american company and all.

Tech)ok sir now if you could close all of the applications that you have open.

User)O.K. now hat

Tech) Double click on My Computer

User) What is that now??

Tech) double click on My Computer

User) How in the devil can I do that?

Tech) click twice on My computer...

User) but you're in Canada?.?.?.?.?

Needless to say it was a long call after that...