Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

My company was trying to upgrade all of our customers prior to 12/31/99 so that no one would have any Y2K issues. One fellow - let's call him technologically challenged - didn't quite "get it". His PC was about 7 years old, a 33mHz 386 with 8 megs RAM. He wanted to know what kind of computer he needed. When hearing that he would need a cd-rom drive (among other things ...), he thought he knew what we meant. He called our help desk and asked which "little thingy on the back" he should use to plug in the cd player he got for Christmas.

I work as a computer support technician and on New Year's we decided that some people weren't Y2K compatible. I had one particularly funny call.

Me: Thank you for calling....how may I help you?

Customer: Yes, my cd drive and my writer won't work.

Me: Ok, just a moment (I then checked the callers history and learned he had a tech on site the day before and the tech determined software issue, not hardware).

Customer: I still can use the writeable, but I can read normal cd's.

Me: Ok, when you are trying to record the cd, what steps do you go through?

Customer: Well, I put the cd's in the drives, the music in the top and the writeable in the bottom and the cd starts to play so I thought it was recording.

Me: Ok, that isn't the correct way sir. What software do you use to record the cd's?

Customer: You need software for that???? I thought it did it all by itself.

Needless to say, I hit mute and laughed as I told the story to all my friends around me. I told the man to call his manufacturer and get the software.

Just a quickie for all you techs out there abusing the non-computer literate..I tech help for a large printer firm that supports other massive corporates with their own "highly paid expert" IT people. The answer I normally get when I ask "when did the problem start?" is "when out IT people had a look at it". Now what would u say to a mechanic if he "looked" at your car and the brakes stopped working and told you that your too stupid to push the brake pedal?

Have fun kids and remember God isnt as great as you think, hes just got good marketing

OK to set the scene; I am buying some CD-ROMS, not in a Computer shop, but rather in a bookshops which also sells PC software. It is a Saturday so the shop is very busy and the girl at the cash desk only works there on Saturdays.

I hand over the CDs and she turns the jewel case over revealing a magnetic security tag on the back. This tag is there to stop patrons leaving the shop with the CDs, but not going through the formality of paying for them. Unfortunately, due to the dictates of fashion her fingernails are very long and she cannot use them to remove the tag.

“Why not put them through the demagnetiser?” I ask.

“We’re not allowed to do that, sir” she replies, still scratching ineffectively at the tag.

As I said, it was a Saturday, and I was not the only one standing waiting to pay. Eventually, with the line behind me showing all the symptoms of turning into a mob, she hails a passing supervisor.

“What’s the problem?” asks the super.

“I can’t get the tag off and I’m not allowed to put them in the demagnetiser,” says the girl.

“Oh, that is easy,” says the supervisor, removing the CD from the jewel case and popping the case into the demagnetiser.

“Why can’t the CD go through the demagnetiser?” I ask.

“It would erase all the data, sir. I’m sure that you wouldn’t like to get home and find that you have bought a blank CD,” explains the supervisor, using her `I am talking to an idiot but he is a customer’ voice.

“But the data is not recorded magnetically, it is read and written by a laser, using light,” I point out.

“I think you’ll find that you are wrong, sir,” says the supervisor.

“No, I’m right, I’ve been working as a computer engineer since 1963,” I say, as I pay for the goods and leave.

I work for a small ISP in Toronto. I got a call from one of

our customers. He was quite irate, wanting to know what we

had done to HotMail. Everytime he tried to get to the site,

he'd get "horrible things his children shouldn't see". On a

whim, I brought up a browser and typed in "www.hotmail.com".

Everything seemed to be working fine. Knowing that my user

didn't speak very clear English, I suspected, he couldn't

spell either, because it turned out that the site he was

typing in was "hot male".com, which is a gay male pornography

site.

Overheard from an desk behind me:

"No sir, you can't download a modem"

I had to hit mute in a hurry, but he managed to keep himself composed, amazingly enough.

I'd like to give kudos to the proprieters of this fine site--you, and the unfortuante souls who these scarcely believable stories happen to have given me encouragement, as I know "it's not just me."(p)(/p)

I work for a somewhat large ISP on the *west* side of the *US*. We deal with everyone in turn; from the seasoned techno-veteran, to the sweet 80 year old grandmother whose well-meaning son bought her a makes-me-salivate system so that she can check her email. We often field questions that you shouldn't expect an ISP to have to deal with (and sometimes you do, but you wish you didn't have to).(p)(p/)

This call came to me early one morning, near the beginning of my shift.(p)(p/)

TS=Me, CW=Concerned Worry-Wart(p)(p/)

TS:"Thanks for calling ********** tech support, my name is *******. Can I have your billing telephone number, area code first please?"(p)(p/)

(proceed to get pertinent information based on phone number)

(p)(p/)

TS:"Alright, *Mary*, what can I do for you?"(p)(p/)

CW:"I want to get this pornography off of my computer."(p)(p/)

(thinking that someone had been a naughty so-and-so)(p)(p/)

TS:"Okay, that can be done. Where is this material located?"(p)(p/)

CW:"I don't know exactly. They said it's everywhere."(p)(p/)

TS:"And who would *they* be?"(p)(p/)

CW:"Well, I was watching Oprah, and they were talking about all the pornography on the Internet. I don't want my children to be able to access that kind of filth."(p)(p/)

(p)(p/)

Figuring this would be an easy call, and wanting to be as helpful as possible, I proceeded to explain the merits and relative ease of purchasing and installing a protective software package, such as Cybersitter or Netnanny. I didn't expect to have to answer the next question out of her mouth:(p)(p/)

CW:"Will this software still allow me to access these sites?"(p)(p/)

(short pause while it sinks in)(p)(p/)

TS:"I suppose so. There's a password option on many of the packages, so you can enable or disable the protection at will."(p)(p/)

CW:"What if I forget the password?"(p)(p/)

TS:"You could uninstall the software at that point, I suppose. That would erase any password entries, and allow you to reinstall with a new password."(p)(p/)

CW:"But then, couldn't my children do the same thing? Uninstall the software and go to all those naughty sites after all?"(p)(p/)

(p)(p/)

I was a little preposed. I didn't want to lie to the customer. (and didn't want to explain how to create profiles in Windows so that the children wouldn't have access to the uninstall option, as it seemed too much for her--seeing as how she initially referred to Netscape as her ISP.) So I told her I guess they could, if they knew how to.(p)(p/)

CW:"Then I can't have that kind of material available to them. I need to cancel my account. I'll call sales."(p)(p/)

*click*(p)(p/)

(p)(p/)

I didn't get anything else in. Thanks, Oprah.

I work tech support for an ISP that provides the option for

customers to leave a voice mail message if they call after

hours. When we respond the following day and get an answering

machine or other messaging device, we leave them with a case

number to refer to if they still need assistance. Here's a

call I once recieved from such a user.

User: "Don't you people ever respond to your voice mail?"

Me: "Ah...."

User: "Look, never mind that here's my case number,xxx-xxx"

Me: (remember, when we reply to these calls we assign a

case number to them) "Where did you get this case

number from?"

User: "It...It's the one that came with the computer!"

Thanks for the site, man. --Dave

Ok.. you know the Future Shop Flunkies... the ones

who think they know what they are selling and think

they give good customer service and support?

i just love taking them down _several_ knotches.

Its almost as bad as buying a car... Actually, with

the way they treat me (cause i'm a skirt) you'd think

i was buying a car.

I have a pc. My roomie Whitewings has an iMac which leads us to

interesting arguments about which is better.

Anyway...

We were in Future Shop one day. I had the money in my

hands and I was looking for an ethernet card for my system.

This is when it gets good.

Futurshop Flunky 1: (to Whitewings) Do you know what type

of pc it is? What speed and all?

Me: (i go into geek speek about what it is off the top of

my head, quoting exactly what it is, what peripherals it

has and how fast it is. as well as whether it is an intel

or not and what os it runs (i'm a linux newbie here with

a dual boot linux mandrake/windows98))

FF1: (looking straight at WW) Do you know what it is?

What speed it is running at? (he obviously hasn't heard me)

WW: I don't know what it is. Its hers. (pointing at me)

Me: (I repeat the stats a little louder this time)

this goes on for another few tries, when i finally get the

attention of one of the other flunkies.

FF2: so, you've got an intel right?

Me: yes. and i want an ethernet card that's linux capable.

he then proceeds to tell me how i don't want it... and goes

on about how i actually want this other model (ick..

windows only). I demand to look at all the models, and i

finally pick the one that is 10$ cheaper than the rest

_cause its linux capable_. he then asks me more questions

about whether or not i can install it myself (i can. i did

it for my camera and my scanner :P) and whether i

understood that it was not a good one to get - it was too

cheap!

All this while Whitewings distracted the other flunky and

talked the geek talk to him about his iMac.

I went back a few days later... I was on the rampage

looking for more ram and a bigger hard drive...

The same flunkies spotted me and were trying to sell

me an expensive hard drive ($500+) and not the ram i

wanted.

I walked out of the store telling after telling them off.

"I do know what I have - I had it special ordered to

_my_ specs. I can install it myself. Yes, I've installed

hardware before. Yes, I've installed software before.

No you can't put your grubby little hands in my machine

cause if you do you'll void my warrantee! Just because I'm

female doesn't mean that I don't know anything about

computers. I know more about computers then you guys

do, and I don't have the training you do! I do tech

support for friends. Do you do that?" On and on I

went for a good ten minutes tearing one of the guys

apart about how there are women who do know their

computers and who don't like being treated like idiots.

They still just don't quite get it.

Anyway.. I think I've created a pavlovia response in that

store when it comes to them. If I come in alone or with

Whitewings, they come running to me and ask me what I want.

Its still not perfect, but its getting there.

I _love_ frustrating them. After all, what comes around

goes around.

I time them. I check their facts. I price check.

And worse? I now have a wholesaler that will get it for

me cheaper than they ever could! And my wholesaler treats

me with respect and we discuss what my computer needs vs

what i want and what money I have available. For the price

of a 13G hd at Future shop, I was able to get it, another

64 megs of ram and some replacement parts (keyboard,

microphone) that i needed.

In my year and a half in tech support, I've talked to a lot of stupid people, and I thought I'd heard them all. Then I talked to this one customer. She was worried about security problems on the net, because her 18-year-old son had cerebral palsey. So I figured I'd just lay a few of her fears to rest, and that would be that... but no, of course not.

Her first question was she'd heard on the news about coming into people's homes through the internet. And I'm quite sure she meant literally through the phone lines. At this point my eyes widened, but let it pass.

Her second question was about kids being kidnapped by people they met on the internet. I took this question quite seriously.

For third question, she brought up the topic of cybersex. "Uhoh", I thought... and with good reason.

Cust: I heard about this woman who got pregnant through cybersex.

Me: (jaw drop) Um, no ma'am, you can't get pregnant through cybersex. Cybersex is like reading a novel, except you're putting in half of the conversation. It's only text. The only thing you can get through cybersex is carpal's tunnel, where your wrist hurts. You cannot get pregnant, nor can you get STD's through cybersex...

Now, while I was saying this, another tech was walking towards me. Right when I said "STD", he gave me this odd look and turned around. I couldn't help but giggle.. it was just too ridiculous...

Now, I think I really have heard it all.

In a previous job, I did a lot of support for users. I was the chief cook and bottle washer for a small hospital. One day, I received a call from a woman who was looking to get "Capital Numbers", her word. I was in themiddle of doing some involved porgeamming and this jolted me out of that mode in a hurry. I had to asked a couple of times what she was talking about and she repeatly said Capital Numbers.

Now i am qiute versed on character sets and fonts, but I had never run across a number in a differt case. I was trying to work around on the phone just what she was asking for and couldn't get it, so I finally gave up and went down to where she was working. Being in a small workplace does have it's advantages.

When I got there, I asked her what she wanted, and she said pointed to the number 3 on her keyboard and she said that! I was still baffled and said that I was confused. She then stated" You know, how do I get the exclaimation mark and the dollar sign?"

I finally clued in and said" The shift key".

I work for a large company, originally in Support. Now, I'm

manager of support. I have a story that became a classic

in our department in a short time.

Recently, we switched Firewall and Proxy software from

Netscape, which required that each user be set up

separately with an extra password, to Microsoft, which uses

the users' domain login to access the internet. Since the

users' existing internet passwords would no longer be

valid, we wrote an email to explain the change and what

the users would have to do to access the internet. To be

helpful, we included a screenshot of the internet login

screen, with an example of how the user should enter his/her

username and password for access.

Not long after this email went out, we got a call from a

user who said he couldn't access the internet. He

said: "I've clicked the OK button several times, and nothing

happens!" After a bit of querying, we found out he was

clicking the "OK button" on the screenshot in the email!

We got another call from a user who complained that the

wrong username was in the login screen and he couldn't

delete it to enter his own username (same thing, he was

trying to edit the "fields" in the screenshot!). Since then,

whenever a mail is sent with a screenshot you'll see, in

big boldface print underneath: "This is a screenshot, not

an active window".

I work for a university help-desk. This user calls up and

asks if Internet explorer was down. I told her it was

working fine on campus. I asked what the problem was and

she replied that when she came back from vacation, her home

page was out of date. I told her to hit the refresh button,

the page was reloaded with the current date and she

was back on her way.

I got a call one afternoon from a very pleasant lady who was having difficulty using her CD-ROM. I asked what it was doing or what she had done....i.e. is it making noise or are there any lights? She said that she put the cd in the drive and closed the door. And my response was...you closed what door. She said she put the cd in the drive and you know flipped the door shut. She said it was completly dead. So I went to the site and discovered that my instincts were true. The lady had stuck her $150.00 cd into .50 cent 5 1/4" drive. After holding myself back from making any comments whatsoever, I explained to her that when the 386sx's came out, that there were no such things as CD-ROM drives. And she stood right up and said, well that's impossible this has an intel pentium in it, the sticker on the outside of the box says so. Not to berat anyone or any profession, but this lady was a school teacher. I am so glad that she didn't teach me.

Back in my day when I worked helpdesk, for AST, I got a call from a gentleman with a southern accent. Here is a rough account of what happened.

Me: Thanks for calling AST tech support, my name is xxxx by badge number is xxxx, can I get the serial number for your computer please.

Eu: Listen here son, I just have a really quick question for ya, it is regarding warranty repair, I aint got my serial number handy, now.

Me: Go ahead sir, what can I help you with.

Eu: Well the thing is this sunny, my 3 year old son was playing on the computer and he spilled kool aid all over the darn keyboard. The damn thing still works, but its really sticky and red all over, it looks like something bled to death on it.

Me: Thats really unfortunate, but we don't cover that under waranty repair, since your son actually spilled the kool aid, and it is still functional.

Eu: Shucks, Well let me ask you something else, is that keyboard of ya'alls dishwasher safe, I mean can I just stick it in to the dishwasher, will it still work afterwords?

(At this point, I just had to press mute and laugh my guts out)

I felt so sorry for the guy, that I sent him a new kb. Just goes to show ya, that there are more I D 10 Ts out there then normal people!

One of our sales reps (against strict company policy against unauthorized software) installed Elf Bowling after someone e-mailed it to him. Then, when discussing the game, someone told him that it contained a virus. (There are rumours that Elf Bowling either contains a virus or sends information from your computer to a Web site; neither rumour is true.)

In a panic, he did a Find on his computer and deleted every file with a filename containing the letters "elf." For added safety, he emptied his recycle bin.

Nice plan, if totally unnecessary. The problem is that the order entry software we use includes the files elf.ini, elfsvcr.dll, aeptxt.elf, and txt2elf.dll. Surprise, surprise, his program wouldn't work anymore.

Actually, I'm sort of glad he did it. I tried to e-mail him the files and my Notes server to his Exchange server took FOUR HOURS. I had one of those rare flashes of brilliance and uploaded the files to our Internet site. I gave him the logon and password and he downloaded them and was up and running. Total transaction time: five minutes. You can bet my boss heard about that dazzling success, considering how hard we fought to get that damned site.

A long time ago in an office space far far away...

I was the tech support manager for a very large mac catalog reseller, I did this for about 3 years and have some great high lights.

The Sweet Clueless Old Man;

I got this call from a very nice old man stating that his mouse was very very hard to use. He stated that the dust cover was making it hard to move the mouse.

I quickly realised that he thought the packing bag was a dust cover. Not wanting to embarrass this kind old man I told him.

"Sir, I tell you a secreat that all experienced users know, Take the dust cover off it is a sign of an experienced user, and iff your mouse gets dusty you can just brush it off."

The Female Dog;

A customer that we had already had problems with called in to say that her new computer, was not working. She had set it up the day before and it had worked fine. The next day she had had her carpets cleaned and her computer was no longer working.

She complained that the carpet cleaning chemicals must have damaged her computer and since it was not labeled anywhere that carpet cleaning chemicals damage computers she was entitled to a refund/new computer. Unfortunatly she first explained this to a tech that I had just hired that was not used to thinking things through, he told her that any damage would be the fault of the carpet cleaning company.

After threating lawsuit she was transfered to me. She explained the whole situation to me and I thought it through and never heard of carpet cleaning damaging a computer

It finally hit me and I asked her the question?

ME:"Ma'am, did they move your furniture when they cleaned?"

Cust:"Yes"

Me:"Did they plug in your computer back in?"

Cust:"Fudge! (actually only four letters rymes with duck)

"Click"

And so ended that call.

Only at the end of the day;

Right before closing I received a call with a customer complaing that his new computer hada virus on it. Being in the mac world where viri are rare I asked him what his symptems were.

He stated that when he moved the mouse down it moved up and when he moved it right it went left.

Keep in mind that this was the end of a very busy day.

There used to be a joke extension (boot file to win users) that did do this but I could not figure out how this would have been resident on a new out of the box machine. I asked if any friends/kids had been on it, and the cust said "No," We then did a file search looking for this file and it came up negative. I had him list out all of his extensions and I verified they were correct and supposed to be there(not the joke one renamed.)

I then really had to use the restroom (Hey even Tech guys have calls for nature.) I excused myself saying I had to take another call real quick and went over to the Mens room, and as I was taking care of biz it finally hit me.

I got back to the phone and asked the customer...

ME:"Which way is the tail pointing?"

Cust:"towards me... why?"

ME:"Sir, turn it around and it will work fine"

See even techs have bad days.

Phil Maurer

ex tech support manager

Current Network Admin.

I used to do e-mail support for a smaller ISP in my area.

This job had been passed around so many times that a great

Many stories had circulated about some of the dumber

customers. The typical "I can't send e-mail" and such.

But one trade secret among we mail jockies was the "Wall of

Shame". Many times lUsers would surf onto the company site

and ask questions to support thinking that it was help

for ANY problem. Some of these pleas for help included

jems like:

Can you help me find a specialist to cure

Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

"Dude, What are your current prices for bongs and stuff"

"Could you help me locate a home in Guatemala?"

"Please enroll me in the beer of the month club...do I have

to be 18?"

"Do you have a recipe for pot (marijuana) brownies?"

Needless to say...Whenever the frustrated e-mails flowed

and the rants and threats to cancel overwhelmed us, we

would refer to the wall of shame and make the world float

away.

Thank you customers, for the Funny things you do. America,

THIS IS YOU!! hehe

I had this user on the line. A very nice older gentleman. So what was the problem? He had me on speakerphone while the maintenance people were vacuuming in the same room. I had to ask him THREE TIMES to please pick up the handset so that I could hear him. Ugh!

To use the software I support you need a modem, plain

and simple. I got a call today where these 4 people

on speakerphone were talking all at once to me. They

were trying to install and register and kept getting

"Error trying to find modem".

{me} So do you have a modem?

{them} not on this machine, the one it's networked with

has one though.

{me} Why don't you install an administrative copy on the

other machine and pull it off of there?

{them) no, no...we want to just put it on this one.

{me} so you're networked? you have network cards and wires

connecting the machines?

{them} cards?

{me} uhhh...how exactly are your computers connected?

{them} well...they are both plugged into the same

surge protector on the floor.

{me} um, excuse me??

AAAARGH!!!!

I slammed my big mute botton down and started cracking

up. That mute botton comes in handy on almost every

call i get. I couldn't wait until break so I could

tell everyone about this call.

I good Friend of mine called me other night because after uninstalling a game, Command and Conquer" his computer refused to boot up. I though that this was interesting becuase the error was "Missing Command Interpter." After talking with him for about 10 minutes I started to realize that what he had done was not use the Uninstall software.

Here's what he did:

Fisrt, performed a search of the entire C Drive for the keyword "Command." When the results of the search were displayed he proceeded to select all, then continued to delete everything with the keyword "Command." Good Bye Command.com, Command Folder,...etc

And here's the real kicker, Command and Conquer was located on his "D" drive.

Read the Instructions People, Read the Instructions!!!

Our CEO)is doing a fancy-schmancy presentation in a few days

morning. Today his assistant brought his spiffy IBM laptop

up to me to very that it had the necessary software to do

that presentation.

I verified that it did, indeed have desired software, and I

accompanied her back downstairs to get the presentations

from the network to the laptop.

Network? Well, the laptop's email program was still up,

but the it was rather far from any network connection

when the assistant presented it to me, so I thought

"bummer - it's going to lock up, and I'll have to reboot

and scandisk before it's ready for those files". (most

Windows computers don't care to be physically disconnected

from the network after the user has logged in)

The situation got worse ...

I set his laptop down on the docking station, and sure

enough, it froze.

Funny thing, though - I didn't hear the little "snick" of

the docking station latching onto the laptop. I tried

pulling it off, and pushing it on, and pulling it off,

and pushing it on - but no go.

I looked at the left side of the laptop as I tried putting

it on again - was that a gap between the computer and the

station?

I set aside the laptop, and saw a funny little

almost-triangular piece of plastic on the docking station,

just inside the left latch. I brushed it away and wondered

where it came from ... and saw a similar piece of plastic

resting just inside the right latch. I brushed that away,

and the laptop seated on the docking station WITHOUT A CLICK.

As I pulled the laptop off again, I realized that our _dear_

CEO (presumably in a fit of rage) had ripped the laptop off

the docking station WITHOUT pressing those cute little

catch release buttons.

I'm so glad MY boss isn't a PHB - he got a kick out of the

event, too!

all together now:

"He knows he's a man

He knows he's a man

He busted some hardware ..

He knows he's a man"

(with apologies to "Wheaties")

I work for a worldwide ISP based in California. After the new year, we suddenly recieved an influx of calls having to do with the Netscape certificate expirations. Normally, it's only a matter of telling the customer how to configure Netscape Communicator 4.7 as their default browser, but this one takes the cake:

Caller X calls tech support...

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

C: Yes, it's ********.

M: Okay, and what can I help you with today, sir.

(side note: caller is already arrogant- like he has a clue to what he has done)

C: Well, I downloaded the newest version of Netscape, but when I connect to ***, it brings up the old version.

M: Okay, sir? Did you say yes or no when it asked if you wanted to install the program?

C: Well, of course, I said NO!

M: (trying not to laugh) Okay, sir, you won't be able to run an application like N unless you install it. How long was the download?

C: About an hour and a half...

Naturally, the guy was a moron. Just to make him even more miserable- I told him he'd have to do the entire download over again! And, sir? Please say yes to the install!!! I just knew it was going to be a long day...

I delivered a new TV to a customer in upstate New York. That day it was about 20 degrees and the TV had been in the truck for about two hours. When we brought the Tv in we told the owner to let it set in the house for at least 4-6 hours to let all the condensation dry. As we were getting all the paperwork ready for him to sign he plugged in the set and turned it on. He was absolutely dumbfounded when the sparks and smoke came out of his brand new TV.

Some time back in the days of DOS, when drivers came on floppies a guy called my shop. He tells me that his sound card is not working. After breaking it down to a driver problem I start to step him through install process. I tell him to take his audio setup disk and place it in drive A:. He does and I proceed to tell him to “Type ‘A’ colon ‘:’and hit enter”, he replies by asking where the colon was. He said colon, so he did not mistake what I had said. I tell him it is beside the ‘L’ key. A few moments go by and he then asks, “Is that to the left or the right of the ‘L’”.

Brain Dead Tech Support wannabe's

I just LOV your site - I used to download the Tech Support Tales from AOL's file library 5 or 6 years ago, and I STILL haven't stopped laughing.

What REALLY makes me laugh is when tech support people write in about the calls they take; but in fact expose *themselves* as the brain dead ones!

Here are a few from the site, along with my comments...

(...)

I'd just like to mention that this AOLuser is one of the people that we tech-support people have problems with. Every single one of the snide little comments that he spewed forth is incorrect.

(...)

1) You'd think this idiot would know that copies of the drivers would (most likely) be in the WINDOWS\System (or WINNT\System32) directory, accessible with a Find File...

(story about user not having drivers for hardware he doesn't know anything about. If the drivers hadn't been installed, they wouldn't be in the system directories.)

(...)

2) You would think this support nerd would tell the user to download the FREE Eudora Light or Outlook Express, instead of trying to use PINE...

(Story about user trying to print color pictures to a black and white printer.)

(...)

3) You would think that having a maximum password length of only 8 characters wouldn't be too secure...

(8 character maximum is industry standard. Some things have more, some less, but 8 is most common.)

(...)

4) Didn't this joker think that just maybe the user had stored his files on a server volume... Can you say "Drive Mapping?!"

(snip story about user using training computer)

Can you say 'training computer'? Training computers generally don't have a real connection to networks to avoid people who don't know what they're doing inadvertently damaging things.

(...)

5) It's pretty easy for first time users to get their password usage confused. Haven't this firm's Web designers heard of using cookies for authentication?!

(snip story about AOLuser whining about passwords)

A lot of people don't like cookies. A lot of people have them turned off. People who know anything about computers would realize that 'Enter -A- username' does not mean 'give me your AOL screen crap'. Yes, it's possible that

(...)

6) And this one is my favorite: This support geek forgot about the swap file; and also forgot to tell the user which files to *not* delete...

(snip story about tech trying to diagnose problem caused by user deleting windows directory before calling tech.)

So now we're supposed to be psychic, and call users to stop them BEFORE they do something stupid.

(...)

As you can see, some of the people that are in tech support are so arrogant that they don't even realize how stupid they *really* are!

(...)

As you can see, some of the users that call tech support are so arrogant that they don't even realize how stupid THEY really are.

Having trouble connecting via modem with a customer, I began to guide him through checking software settings on the host computer. After getting several "dud" responses to simple questions regarding his setup, I finally resorted to asking him to reset his modem. He said he didn't know how to do that. I confidently advised him not to worry; just reach around the back of the modem and flip the switch so that the lights go off. There was a suspicious pause, after which he said in a surprised tone, "oh, was I supposed to be at the computer with the modem?" (I'm proud of my restrained response; I merely mentioned that he would find it easier to work with that way.) The call proceeded normally and was successful.

A couple years ago, I worked for a small, unknown ISP right

on the boarder of Iowa and South Dakota (Gateway Country). I

could go on for hours about the many tech support calls and

emails that I fielded daily, but there are just two that

stick in my mind the best, they are also the two I frequently

relate to people.

1) A woman calls the shop and tells me that she has a CD-ROM

stuck in the drive and no matter how hard she pushes the button

on the front it doesn't come out. I tell her to bring the

machine into the shop and I will see what I can do. Luckily, I

was on my lunch break when the machine arrived. Her machine was

not equipped with a CD-ROM Drive. However, it did have a 3 1/2"

and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. After dismantling the 5 1/4" drive

to remove the CD... the CD was destroyed.

2) Early one morning, I get a call from a woman that tells me

she wants internet service. Not a problem. I ask the standard

questions for user information sheets and create an account

for her on our servers. I offer to help her set up her computer

over the phone and she tells me that she is at work and will

just have her husband bring the computer to the shop during his

lunch hour for me to set everything up. Again, not a problem.

About 11:45 that morning, in walks her husband and sets the

monitor on the counter... "My wife wanted internet put on this."

Oh how I wanted to grab a magic marker or some white out and

write the word "Internet" on the screen !!!

Well, as a fellow employee once said, "You can't fix Stupid!"

Helpdesk chap phones me today (I do Desktop Support) because a user on my site has a problem loading an app used by almost everyone on site. The usual shortcut is loading another app entirely.

I tell helpdesk chap what's happened and that he needs to talk the user through changing the shortcut target to point back at the correct app again.

He says he doesn't know how; he's never changed a shortcut property in his life. His excuse: "I'm new."

I end up talking helpdesk chap through what shortcuts are and how to create and modify them.

Maybe I've got it all wrong, but surely a helpdesk staffer should be more technical than that. Or maybe shortcuts really are in-depth bowels-of-the-beast sort of stuff, best left to MCSEs and the like. Who knows? Anyway, I shall never again look at our helpdesk staff in the same light...

When I was working in Swaziland, there was a lawyer who had a little less than no knowledge on computers. He came to me one day very proud that he had just employed a secretary who had done her studies in Zimbabwe. This was a few years ago when we still used Word Perfect 5. The secretary had phoned in for a little help on a document. I couldn't understand what she was saying and handed her over to my sister-in-law for assistance. There was a bit of noise going on and I was most amused to see the multitude of expressions on my sister-in-law's face. She was not getting anywhere with this secretary and thought she'd try a new approach and asked her to escape.

There was a deathly silence on the other end of the line. We waited for a few minutes and there was still no answer so we hung up. About a half hour later the secretary phoned back and asked what she should do now. We asked her what she had done and she said she had escaped. She had escaped. Yes, you guessed it, she had gone out the room for her few minutes and that was her escape. Needless to say we were rolling on the floor with laughter and of course the consequences were that the secretary was sent back to Secretarial School.

I currently work doing phone technical support for a small software company. I've heard all kinds of nonsense from lusers, but here's a story from the other end:

I was 12 years old and not good with computers. My parents had purchased me what was at the time the best you could buy: a 486 dx2 66 complete with Windows 3.11. I knew the basics of turn it on, click here click there, but not what certain files did. I made the intelligent (yeah right) purchase of DOS for Dummies. Instead of reading the book, I picked a page at random and it happened to be about the DEL command. Brilliant me ended up deleted my AUTOEXEC.BAT (go ahead you can laugh). Intimidated by the C:\ and the thought of what my parents would do to me I called Microsoft Technical support. That was my second mistake.

The tech I got on the phone with sounded about like he was at least 30 years old. This was more than 10 years ago and I can still remember this conversation like it was yesterday:

ME: Umm, I was playing with DOS commands and I think I deleted something I shouldn't've. It was called AUTOEXEC something.

TECH: (very seriously) The file you deleted is used by windows. By deleting it you've completely corrupted Windows and you need to format your drive.

I knew what FORMAT did to a floppy disk, and was starting to think this guy knew about as much about computers as my dog.

ME: Umm, are you sure it's that bad? There are other AUTOEXEC files in here just not the BAT one. There's one that is a .BAK and a .BAS --

TECH: (angrily interrupting me) Those are different the one you deleted because they don't have the extension .BAT on them. They won't work. You really need to format your drive.

ME: (feeling this will go easier if I don't argue with him)How do I do that?

TECH: (patronizing) You'll have to bring it back to the place you bought it and tell them they need to re-install everything.

ME: I won't. Thanks. (I hung up feeling insulted)

After thinking for a minute about the parental consequences I opened the DOS for Dummies book and found the RENAME command. I renamed the AUTOEXEC.BAS file to AUTOEXEC.BAT.

I rebooted.

Problem solved by a 12 year old with a book.

My parents NEVER found out.

I work for a small software company that puts out a scheduling program. Sometimes data gets corrupted and we need the customer to send us our data. Some of these databases are quite large and a lot of our clients are still on modems so we usually like for them to zip the files first. Here goes on such conversation:

ME: Okay, now you see the ****** directory? Now open that directory and there should be another directory in there called DATA.

HER: I see it.

ME: Okay now right click on that DATA directory. That will give you a menu, in that menu there's an option ADD TO DATA.ZIP.

HER: (reading off the winzip screen) Thank you for--

ME: (not wishing to hear an entire recitation) Click on I Agree.

HER: Okay I think it's done. I'm back at the Explorer screen.

ME: Now I need you to e-mail that data.zip file to me.

HER: How do I do that?

I put her on hold and banged my head against my cube wall. This was turning out to be the 10th time this month I needed their data. This was also the 10th time explaining this process to her.

ME: Open Outlook Express.

Now note here that I said OUTLOOK EXPRESS.

HER: Okay I opened it.

ME: Now create a NEW MESSAGE and--

HER: I don't see anything that says NEW MESSAGE.

ME: (blink) What do you see?

HER: I see these really big buttons that say: NEW; OPEN; FAVORITES; ADD; EXTRACT; VIEW --

ME: (not believing what I'm hearing) Cathy, you need to open MS Outlook not Winzip.

HER:(in all seriousness) You mean I can't e-mail the file from Winzip?

ME: (not knowing whether to laugh or cry) No, you have to use an e-mail program like Outlook Express. Winzip is a compression utility.

HER: But why do I have to do it from Outlook if I created the file in Winzip?

Needless to say it too 6 tries to get that file. Not week month later I had to get her data from her again.

The Following tale shows the Tech boys ignorance as many systems DO lock the case with a key. One such system is the IBM PS/Valuepoint system. The model is in widespread use even today and if the case is locked it can not be opened without a key. Perhaps you might want to do a little research before you reidicule your callers?

Where's the key

Being a Tech on the phones, can lead to some funny stories, I thought I had heard all of the really strange questions, until this one.

Beep

Me: Thank you for calling Tech support how can i help you

Caller: I need a key

Me: I'm sorry a product key?

Caller: No I need a key to put more memory in my system

Me:Ok, lets start over, are you talking about a key for opening something?

Caller: (big sigh) YES...I need a key so I can OPEN my case and put in more memory, it is on the front of the case it is a little round key hole like the old alarm keys

Me: (trying not to laugh) I'm sorry, you don't need a key to open your system that key hole locks the keyboard and prevents it from being used, you open the case by taking off the screw in the back....

Caller Oh.......click

id10t day.... :o)

At my last job I used to work for a consulting company that did on-site technical support for mainly public libraries. Most of these libraries had public access machines that anyone with a library card could access. Needless to say that one of the most common replacements was the floppy drive. Here are some of my floppy drive stories:

This one library had 3 public access machines in their children's department. I was once at the library every day for a week because some child decided the floppy drive was a lollipop holder. I laughed for 5 minutes straight when I saw the white lollipop stick poking out from the floppy drive. More than 20 floppy drives later, they finally decided to buy floppy drive locks.

But you can expect that kind of thing from unattended children. It's the adults that amazed me the most.

I had to remove a woman's library card from a floppy drive. She had read the sign next to the computer that says "Please present your library card to use the computer" and thought she had to put the card into the computer.

Another man walked into the library after a rainstorm. He had his books in a pile in front of him with his floppy disk on top. He did NOT have an umbrella. I HEARD the spark from across the room. When I pulled the floppy out of the drive, it had water dripping out of it. It had SO much water in it, the water dripped through the bottom of the floppy drive onto the hard drive. Several droplets had even rolled off the harddrive casing and onto the motherboard, shorting the entire computer.

Technician was dispatched to an office on the campus, with the report that several of the laptop's keys had fallen out. Upon arrival, the laptop was in its dock with its cover closed.

After asking which keys were off, the tech was handed a ziplock baggie with *all* of the keys in it!.

Asking how this happened, the customer stated that him and his wife went out for the evening. He had left the laptop on the kitchen table, to recharge the batteries.

The 2-yeay-old daughter was left in the capable hands of the older siblings.

After returning from a nice evening, the kitchen table was littered with all of these strange little plastic pieces!

The child must not have liked all of the toys they gave her for Xmass!

She had managed to remove even the smallest plastic part on the keyboard.

Good thing she did not try to eat any of these.

This goes to show that PC laptops are Not for children under 3! Many small plastic parts inside!

I've read about techs having to put customers on hold because they could not restrain their laughter. I'm a fairly serious person and until about 5 minutes ago I never had to put a customer on hold to laugh. Yes I'm on the phone with that person as I'm typing this. She's a really sweet woman and has been patiently working with me for weeks. She's been been getting Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime errors in both Netscape and Internet Explorer.

ME: I know you gave me the error you're getting in IE, but I just need to get the exact Netscape error also.

HER: Oh, sure. So I just go ahead and start Netscape? Oh, dear, I don't see it... hmm... No it's not there.

ME: Netsape's not there? Did you remove it?

HER: No... do you think this has anything to do with the restore I did yesterday?

ME: (blink) You did a restore yesterday?

HER: Yeah.

ME: Ummm, if you don't mind my asking, why?

HER: Oh well, I was sorta told to.

ME: Your supervisor told you to restore your computer?

HER: Yeah, he said it's a really good idea to restore it every few weeks.

ME: Umm, could you hold on for a second?

I barely got the word "second" out, when I put her on hold I burst. I had had her install Netscape almost 3 weeks ago. The backup she restored was so old that Netscape install wasn't included. It took me nearly 2 minutes to regain my composure. My manager thought I was going to pee myself.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that her supervisor probably meant it was a good to do a backup not a restore.

I heard this one when i was working for MastercarePC Service,

Aparently in head office there was a pc in the office (old 286) that ran some dos inventory program. On the side of the case was a large switch next to which someone had written Magic and No magic. The switch normally sat at magic and the machine ran ok. One day the cleaner had knocked the switch to no maic and the pc wouldn't boot or do anything until the switch is put back to magic.

Anyway this went on for a year or so until the machine wasn't needed and the tech department grabbed it to find out about the switch.

Apparently it was connected to groung and the motherboard and when it was set to magic the motherboard was grounded and it worked.

Just goes to show?

The customer calls reguarding her brand new computer and asks why the keyboard doesn't work. We check to make sure it's connected & it is. When I ask her to reboot and tell me if the screen indicates that a keyboard is detected when it loads she says, "Screen?" Apperantly she thought that when you type, it is suppose to just come out on the printer like a typewriter and she did not purchase a moniter because she wasn't interested in "games and such."

I have been working on computers as well as customers since

the XT day's. I'm currently working for a company that offers to transfer data from the customers old PC to the new

one free of charge.

Had to call a customer after they had dropped their computer

off and asked what they needed transfered?

His reply was: Just make sure you copy the ms-dos prompt

over there, because that's my accounting program and I can't

afford to loose that.

Nooo Problem I said.

The company I work for puts out a database program for field call scheduling purposes. Some databases can be quite large filled with tons of customers and employees. This one client was calling to get an installation CD. I called to get a backup of their database so we could incorporate it into the new installation. I'd discovered that they didn't have a backup of their 50MB database. He insisted their clerks re-enter the database themselves rather than paying us the $500 since he'd already spent over $2000 dollars on a new computer. Here's a small portion of our conversation. Not all of this guy's dogs were barking.

ME: So when you get the CD just gimme a call and I'll walk you through it.

CLIENT: Thanks.

ME: If you don't mind my asking, (name), what happened to the old PC? I'm just curious.

CLIENT: Last week we had a power failure and the computer fried.

ME: Toasted the hard drive huh?

CLIENT: Tell you the truth I never found out. It wouldn't power on anymore. I didn't think it was worth bothering to fix, so I threw it into the dumpster outside.

He wasted more than 2000 dollars on a new computer and it took their clerks two months to re-input the database all because he didn't bother to try replacing the power supply. I didn't have the heart to tell him.

I'm usually the type of person to refuse technical support to my family. I don't like situations where it ends up I can't fix it and it's taken out on me. I decided to make a slight exception for my father's work PC because his PC Support department is full of morons (I know I did a summer intership there ONCE). He was trying to send me e-mail at my new job, and was getting the usual returns. I figured he was typing something wrong.

ME: Well you're sure you typed my address in right?

DAD: I typed ***** *****.

ME: (trying to be as respectful as I could) Umm, Dad, when you have to type in my e-mail address to send mail to me, NOT my name.

Not two minutes later I received a cheerful e-mail from my father:

)To: *****

)From: ***

)Subjec: HEY!

)

)*****, mail me back if you get this dad.

I reply with HISTORY stating I had gotten the mail and asked how his day was going. This is what I got back:

)To: *****

)From: ***

)Subject: HEY!

)

)Did you get that mail I sent you?

)

) (history from past two e-mails)

Once I had finished reading it, my lotus notes beeped indicating I had another message.

)To: *****

)From: ***

)Subject: HEY!

)

) Is this e-mail address I'm sending this with correct?

)

) (history from the past two e-mails)

The concept of "if I'm answering your mail, I obviously got it" just didn't seem to click for them man. I sat down and began to wonder why his company had promoted him to the position of Vice President.

I work tech support for a major OEM and we service their newest notebook. We had an end user call us back after she recieved her unit after having repaired. She was calling to complain about the service for her unit. Her problem wasn't with the repairs (the unit was working fine afterwards). Her complaint was that she didn't get her box that she sent it in with back.

See, she uses the box to carry her notebook whereever she goes. She was extremely upset that the box she got back wasn't as "pretty" as hers was and she was was irate. Irate enough to demand to speak to a supervisor to get her box back to her ASAP.

After the call (which was put on speakerphone), we all had a good laugh.

Hi there,

If you thought (L)users only exist on the OTHER side of the line...

Today I sat next to a new guy. I was doing E-mail support,

he was taking calls. He kept me from my work a lot with stupid

questions. At one point I even shouted at him "you were

hired because you are expected to KNOW that!!".

Example: I heard him telling a customer that her proxy

settings were wrong, then I heard him mute the customer

and heard the boding squeek of his chair as he turned my way.

"where do I alter the proxy settings for outlook?"

Jaws drop.

Me:You mean "outlook express?"

him: "yea.."

Me: "E-mail,.. outlook?"

him: "yes.."

me: "wait let me ask someone.."

I then "asked" everybody on the floor in his name where

the proxy settings for outlook express could be changed.

Besides, this particular customer didn't need to set

ANY proxy settings... not EVEN for the WEB.

Yes I work for an ISP and we got a call from a lady this past week.

She called and said her computer was making a loud noise.

So we said go through and shut the computer down.

Okay it's shutdown and it's still making the noise.

So we said unplug it from the wall.

Okay it's unplugged and it's stil making the noise.

We didn't know what was going on, so we recommended taking it to a computer shop.

She called back 5 minutes later to say that her alarm clock was going off.

This is a true story, I never thought this kind of thing would actually happen where I work... but it did!!!

I used to work for a company that did a lot of technical support for public libraries. We'd get calls every day from the director of one of the smaller libraries we serviced. All our technicians hated going to this library because it was always a waste of time. The problems were always with their childrens department. Their head children's librarian (we'll call her Maureen) was a few clowns short of a circus and refused to listen to any of us. We'd go out there almost every other day at $120 an hour (minimum 1 hour charge) for the stupidest things. Here are is the conversation we'd have with her each time we went out there. Keep in mind I said this to her at least 2 or 3 times a week:

ME: Maureen, the reason your computers are giving you a scandisk every morning is because you're not turning off the computers right.

MAUREEN: (eyes glazing over) oh, I don't really need to know about all that technical stuff.

ME: Yes, Maureen, you DO need to know about it. If you don't turn them off the right way you'll destroy them.

MAUREEN: Well why does the network go down all the time?

ME: Maureen, if you don't put in the password, you won't gain access to the network.

MAUREEN: (eyes glazing over again) But the games on the kids computers won't work.

ME: That's because you're not using the password on the computers.

MAUREEN: I don't need to know about that.

Even after speaking with the Director that she was the problem, not the computers or the network, we'd still get regular calls from him stating the childrens network was down and that the computers still gave him the scandisk errors.

ARRRGH!

I work at a company that does outsource tech support for other companies. Several weeks ago a coworker (we'll call him Ken) told us what had just happened on a call.

Ken: This is Ken, (product) support. How can I help you?

Jennifer: Hi, Ken. This is Jennifer, with (other product) support. I have been on the phone for two f***ing hours with the dumbest m*****f***ers on Earth!

Customer (in a small voice): Jennifer, are you talking about us?

Ken had great presence of mind and was able to deny that Jennifer was talking about the customer and quickly got started troubleshooting. Needless to say though, he documented the heck out of what happened and who said what, in case that customer got surveyed. =:-O

I am a tech supporter for HP scanjets. Many of our scanner can only by a Scsi card. One customer I had call in, was having trouble getting his computer to recognize his scanner. So when I took him into his Device manager, to check his Scsi listing, we had to remove his Scsi, and so i Told my customer to "remove the Scsi". I meant for him to click on the listing and delete it. Instead i heared a CRUNCH, and asked "What happened?" My customer said, I removed the Scsi, and then i through it on the table.

2 stories from a clinic where I used to work, and where my

mother still does work...

1) A few days ago, my mom's boss comes to her to tell her

that the internet isn't working and he can't check his email.

She tells him several times that she can't help him; her

computer doesn't have internet access, and even if it did,

all the computers with access are down. She tells him to

call tech support.

Instead, he calls the "network guy", who

is a couple-hundred-dollars-an-hour idiot who (incorrectly)

set up their network. He comes in, examines the computers,

and determines that their network router is dead (how this

relates to the modem in Boss' computer is beyond me,

except that my mom tells me he said "modem-router" several

times; maybe he thought the modem and the router were the

same thing?)

At any rate, he informs them that they need a new router,

and, incidentally, that if they turn off any of the computers,

they won't be able to get it onto the network again. (If

the router is dead, why is the network working as long as

the computers are on?) To further the sadness of this tale,

the accountant (who's studying for her MCSE) agrees with

him and warns Mom not to turn off her computer. Being

obstreporous (and thinking that this sounds like horseshit),

she immediately shuts down and restarts 3 times, to prove

that the computer does, indeed, log back onto the network

without a glitch. Doesn't convince Boss and Accountant, tho.

Last I heard, they were still convinced that the "modem-router"

was dead and that they couldn't turn their computers off.

Still can't get online, still haven't called their ISP.

Story 2: While working for the aforementioned clinic, one of

my jobs (among answering the phones, typing letters, being

their database manager and generally running the office)

was to develop a website for them. So - I get them signed up

for web hosting and register a domain name, and start working.

Basically I put together a website of about 100 pages, with

information about the clinic, health issues, birth control,

and some nifty quizzes with a certificate good for

ten free condoms as a prize. Some minor snafus when it turns

out the Dr. who supposedly gave permission for her pic to

be used freaks out when she finds out the webpage was going

to be *on the Internet!*, but no big deal, and i feel pretty

proud of myself - this is the first time i've ever done this

for money.

Three months later, after I'm no longer working there, I

learn that they've gotten someone else to do the website.

She wants desperately to talk to me about it. So I meet with

her, and the first thing she tells me is that she knows

what she's doing, she "does" web design (I later learned this

meant she had a homepage). Her first question: She can't

figure out how to upload files to the site. Turns out she

didn't know to change "www" to "ftp" in the address. A couple

of months later I check out the site, and *everything* I did

was gone; it was replaced with a hideous 3-page *thing* in

hot orange and lime green, with *really* ugly pictures of

the clinic, the address, phone number and hours, and nothing

else. But, you know, it was free, so it *must've* been better

than the one they paid for, right?

Story 2.5: One of the board members of this same clinic

doesn't trust computers. Every month, when presented with

the fiscal report (done in Excel) he pulls out his calculator

to make sure the computer added everything up right.

As Tech support for a local ISP, I recently had a call from a lady who complained that she was unable to send any more email, as her computer was full and we "the ISP" were not picking it up.

I then went through a complete check of her configuration of her email client and found no problems, I checked her email box setup and found no problem.

So I asked her to walk me through how she sent her mail.

Customer:"I click start, go to programs then accessories and then notepad. I type my letter as I allways have and then print it out without problem. I then fold it nice and neat and stick it in the mail slot on the front of my computer and then click on internet mail and press send"

Me: "Mail slot? I don't understand"

Customer:" Thats the problem, the mail slot is so full I can't put anymore mail into it and need to know when you will be picking my mail up."

So now I see the problem and I explaine that the "mail slot" is in fact her floppy drive. Needles to say she had to replace the drive as it was PACKED with her email. The good point is she no longer uses Notepad and a printer for her email, just he regular postal mail.

Sorry for the english, i'm italian....

I ran a computer shop for a decade in the 80' and my stories are about the infamous 5 1/4 floppy disk.

One day a lawyer calls me becouse his transportable PC (a sort of box with a plasma screen and 286 inside (the grand father of the notebook) has the driver unusable.

I attend the call and i'm confronted with a computer with some big black plastic debris standing inside the floppy drive.

After a brief look at the debris i noted that were parts of a 5 1/4 floppy disk. The main part (the center and a side) were still trapped in the driver, but the other sides look like they were cutted with a scissor.

The lawyer manage to insert the disk 90 degrees rotated, so the switch that sense the write protection of the disk stick in the main slot (the slot where the head reads the disk). The lawyer had the bright idea to turn the disk and cut every parts that protrude; you can imagine what appens to the heads of the drivers not to mention the contens of the disk!

The second story happens in a computer fair near Milan.

Year 1984, the 5 1/4 was used by Commodore 64, Apple IIe and an italian computer, the Olivetti M20.

Well, a guy comes to my desk and asks about "real good floppy disks for a 5 1/4 driver of an M20"

My disks were good ones so i show him a box of "no brand"

disks. You know, a black square in a white envelope.

He takes the disk out of the envelope and looks deep into it.

He says:"Well, all look the same to me, are you sure they are good ones?".While he was speaking he sticks his nails in the glued border and manage to take the "media" out of the plastic case. After a look he says:"It seems easy, but when i put it into the driver the motor trash it!"

You can imagine my face!

I currently work for a Large Canadian Daily newspaper, as such we have to provide in office tech support on the weekends as well as the weekdays.

I was a typical Sunday Afternoon and I had just returned to my desk after eating my lunch in the cafateria.

An Email from one of our more "GIFTED" users was sitting in our helpdesk email inbox.

It was as follows...

From: "Gifted User"

Sent: Sunday, January XX, 2000

To: HelpDesk

I knocked over a glass of water. Some splashed on the

ventilation grill of my G3. Is that bad?

Signed

"Gifted User"

Needless to say I rushed right over to see exactly what our GIFTED user had done to his poor old G3 Mac.

I seems that he had left a glass of water sitting beside his computer. He was in the process of cleaning up his desk when he accidentally knocked over his water glass causing a fair amount of it to spash onto the sides and top of his G3 Desktop computer. I should also mention that his computer was powered on at the time. Luckily for Me (and for him) that the case on his G3 was pretty well sealed and what little water actually got into his Mac splashed into an area which had no exposed circut boards. I pulled the Machine out and did a complete check of its components to make sure that indeed no water was on any exposed circuts, gave it a qucik dustiing with a can of compressed air. I the returned it to him telling him how very lucky he was, followed by a suggestion that in the future that he might want to consider using a water bottle or a cup with a lid on it like everyone else.

My brother called me one day, he had just gotten a new computer.

Phone conversation as follows:

I asked him, "How much RAM does it have?"

He responded very confidently, "1.44 Mb."

So I said, "I see you have a 3.5" Floppy Drive."

He responded, surprised, "Yeah!! How'd you know that!?"

(Note: This was a few years ago, just after the onset of 3.5" drives, when PC's were still being manufactured with both 5.25" & 3.5" drives.)

1975 -- A mainframe-based information retrieval program is

running on special "terminals" in all the libraries of the

atomic energy commission. The system, called RECON, ran at

all of 2400 baud on C2 conditioned phone lines ...

those were the days, right? Anyway, the terminals had all

their "brains" in the keyboard, and used the cheapest

Japanese TV set they could find as the screen part.

(Yup, "my screen is rolling" ... twiddle the vertical hold

button, etc.) Then one day we started getting new terminals,

that used an even CHEAPER black and white TV, all of 12"

diagonal size, built-in digital clock etc.

==============================

User: Hey RECON support, what's the matter with your system ... I've been using it for about 45 minutes, and now the screen has gone blank. ...

RECON: Is the thing plugged in?, Turned On? ...

User: Of course! I said it has been working fine for the last hour!

RECON: Are other terminals there working?

User: Yes ... that's funny.

RECON: Do you have a CURSOR on the screen?

User: What's a CURSOR? (GHEEESH! user IS a Librarian)

RECON: Ok, call the TV repairman, I can see your keystrokes,

but your TV screen must have burn out.

User: OK

================================

One week later ...

================================

User: What's the matter with RECON? I've been using it for

about an hour and my screen went black.

Last week you said it was the TV, but the TV

repair guy said nothing was wrong.

RECON: Let me look at those new terminals we just got in

down at OUR library, and I'll get back to you.

===========================

15 Minutes Later

===========================

RECON: You know the little switch down by the digital clock

on the TV? Ok, did you turn it RIGHT or LEFT

when you turned it ON?

User: Left of course!

RECON: Did you notice that the switch says ON to the right,

but SLEEP TIMER to the left?

Yup, after 45 minutes, the SNOOZE ALARM feature on the TV

simpy decided to turn the tube off so you could go to sleep

watching RECON TV! We actually had to put a plexiglass box

over the switch so it was always in the ON position ...

Otherwise we kept getting these calls ... What's the matter

with RECON? My screen just went black!

I do tech support for an Internet Service Providor. I once

received a call from an ederly man that said a message came

up on his screen in the middle of browsing the web that said

"Netscape has performed an illegal operation and will be

shut down". He was very concerned and wanted to know what

they could have done that was so bad to have their business

"shut down". He said he owned some stock and was afraid

of it being worthless. It took about 10 minutes to expalin

to him that Netscape was still in business.

About five years ago I was working as a computer technician/

support person. I answered a trouble call workoder request

to go to a user area and retreive a CD that had become stuck

in his CD-ROM drive. I glanced at his desktop PC and noticed

that it didn't appear to have any CD-ROM drive installed.

Thinking maybe I was on the wrong service call, I ask the user

to show me where he put the CD since I explained to him that

he didn't have a CD-ROM reader on his machine. I said "of

course I do" "it's right there" he said pointing to his 5.25

inch floppy disk drive. Yes I could see something silver and

shiny stuck in the drive. I said "gee that must have been

difficult getting that CD in there". No he responded it went

in easy but it didn't read the disk and now it won't come out!

I again explained that this was a 5.25 inch floppy drive and he

said ,"a 5.25 what?". He asked if I could retreive his CD disk

without damage as this was his only copy of MS Office. After

removing the drive from his PC and opening the drive case I

was able to extract his disk which had very large goughes from

the drive heads in the media. I told him that he had better

find another copy of Office and someone who could install

it without mishap.

I was for about 12 years a SUN/PC repair technician

/computer support person. One day I answered a service call

that said "hard drive making a loud buzzing noise, going bad".

I though this would be a straight forward call, hear the noise,

repalce the drive, tell the customer to call software support

for a re-load. Arriving at the customer's machine, I listened

with the customer "for the sound" which he explained was inter-

mittent. Sure enough after a few moments, there was a very

loud buzzing coming from somewhere in the area of his PC,

which was on the floor under his desk. The buzzing was loud

and lasted for a few seconds, then it stopped and everything

was quiet. I told the user that I had repaired too many system

to count, and I had never in 12 years heard a noise like that

coming from inside a computer. I have heard bees make this sound

but never a computer.

A few more minutes went by and still the drive

was quiet. Thinking to isolate the problem exactly to the

hard drive I ran a diagnostic that exersized his hard drive

continuously. Still no noise, I stop the diagnostic and while

I was re-thinking the symptoms, the buzzing came again louder.

I thought to myself, enough of this, I removed the case and

sat down next to the hard drive with my hand physically on the

drive. I would either hear or feel this drive make this horrible

noise and then replace it.

A few minutes went by and the noise appeared, but the drive

felt normal. I deceide to just replace the drive and let the

customer have his system back. So shutting down the PC, and

dis-connecting power and cables I prepared to move the system

out from under the user's desk. As I was lifting the now

completely disconnected system with my head under his middle

desk drawer the "buzz" started again. But this time I was

better able to isolate the noise. It was coming from inside

the center desk drawer. As I put the computer down on the

floor and reached for the desk drawer, the user shouted,

"our beepers!!". And when I pulled open the drawer

I saw 5-6 beepers all set on "vibrate" and goiing off every

few minutes, as this was an emergency response office. The

beepers were vibrating the drawer which projected the sound

down towards the floor and the noise appeared to originate

inside the PC.

While working for microsoft technical support for windows 98 a guy came through saying his computer was not functioning properly. This was apparently after he heard you can tweak the computer in the registry, so he deleted the microsoft key under the impression that would help. I hought about telling him to format and reinstall for being so stupid but i had to help him get it back.

Ah well you do get them.

You would never believe some of the tales you here from the techs until they happen to you. I enjoyed the great Urban Legends of the techs, coffee cup holder, foot petal, and the endless others. Now I would like to share my own.

I am the only computer tech, for a small construction company, so when there is a problem, no matter how trivial, I get called. The other day while setting up a new computer for our marketing person (okay I was really goofing off) I was suddenly called upon for my expertise or “Technomagic” as one person here likes to call it. A monitor was supposedly reporting an unusual error message, one that this man had never seen before. He proceeded to tell me how long he worked with computers and that this message looked bad. I proceeded to quit making levels for Thief and approached this problem with a clear mind thinking I will give it the three finger salute and viola, problem solved then it is back to fooling with textures. Upon seeing said machine I spotted the error message “No Connection, Check Signal Cable” immediately I thought “Great I have to plug it in, oh well so be it”. I proceeded to look behind the computer to check said connection and noticed the fan was not spinning, then I listened for another second and I noticed that there was no noise at all coming from the computer. I checked the cable to be sure it wasn’t out anyway, and found it to be quite secure as well as the power cable. I took a step back and a deep breathe, looked the foolish man right in the eye and said, I am now going to work my Technomagic, be careful for it is very powerful and quite mystical. He smiled at my good humor towards the situation and gave me the room that I needed. I then gestured my hand in the air, while softly chanting “by the power of Babbage (not the store, the man) I command you to work”, as if to cast some spell and I then proceeded to thrust my finger onto the power button. The computer began to bleep and chirp to life, and to his surprise the monitor flashed as the boot sequence began, and suddenly Windows loaded. (Okay it is Windows so it wasn’t really suddenly, but it sounds better this way.) Well just thought I would cheer up someone’

s day as this little adventure has cheered up mine. I guess I am lucky that it was that easy, I really didn’t want to have to check the fuse, power supply, etc…

I received this ticket forwarded from the help desk at the company where

I work....apparently the manager has odd thoughts of WHAT exactly goes into

a computer and their components.....

"Subject: color blind pc

Author: Deleted for Secrecy

Date: 1/4/00 12:25 PM

Hi. An [client name] Telemarketing agent (name deleted) has a PC that

apparently a color-bulb blew. Her screen is bright pink no matter what

she's using;[UNIX system], [application name], ccmail, etc.

Can we get this fixed or get her a new PC (that can hold [application])

ASAP? The screen is blinding.

Thanks."

Unlike most people, I guess this manager must think she has to be an expert on

everything....she even [mis]diagnosed the problem!

(Instead of looking for non-existant "tubes" I repaired

the error by replacing the monitor cable)

--Fat Monkey

Tech: Blah-blah Internet, this is Bob, how can I help you?

Luser: I can't get connected.

T: OK. How long has this been going on?

L: About seven months.

T: You haven't been able to connect since, let's see, June?

L: Uh, yeah.

(goes into Dialup Networking and promptly gets connected)

L: WHAT DID YOU CHANGE?

T: Um, nothing.

L: YOU MEAN WE WERE JUST USING THE WRONG CONNECTION?!?!?

T: What's your other connection?

L: Well, this was the joeuser@isp.com account, and we'd been using the "Your Real Name" account.

T: For seven months?

L: (click)

If I'd known it was this easy to make money, I'd be running a 1000-node ISP out of my bedroom ages ago.

I heard this from a fellow tech.

Tech: "Sir would you click on the icon called 'My Computer'"

Custumer: "I'm Morman. I don't belive in icons" Click(custumer disconnectes the call)

You KNOW you're in for a long call when you hear this:

ME: Do you have a floppy disk?

HER: Ummm, I don't know. Is that something inside the computer?

ME: (amazed) Uhhh no. It's a hard, flat plastic square that fits into a slot in the front of your computer.

HER: I've never heard of anything like that.

I wanted to cry.

This isn't a tech support story, but when I had this conversation I laughed at my uncle for a solid 3 minutes.

You see, my uncle is an enthusiastic government conspiracy theorist. To him, everything (btw, this includes driving) is some sort of goverment conspiracy to either take your money or find out what you're doing. The same went for the entire Y2K bug. My computer illiterate uncle kept insisting to me, a computer tech of 8 years, that there shouldn't be any problem at Y2K. His reason for insisting there was no problem? He had heard on the radio that the year 2000 doesn't start in 2000 but in 2001, so all us computer people have nothing to worry about and we were all spending all this money on upgrading computers for nothing.

Lord please help me rise above genetics....

Although I am not a tech support guy, my friends and I usually have enough collective computer know how that we do not require their services. This story relates to the fact that sometimes I have had a little fun with some of the salesmen at computer stores with a little competencey test I use before I let them help me. This test consists of asking him/her if they have a certain device in scuzzy. All of the devices would be absolutely useless as scuzzy which is why I use this test. When I ask for scuzzy monitors, modems, and keyboards, the usual response is a puzzled look followed by, "I'm sorry, but they don't make that in scuzzy," but every once in a while, I'll get, "Let me see if we have some in stock."(while they check, I run) One time, though, I got quite a surprise when the salesman initiated this line of conversation. I was trying to buy an external modem that clearly had a serial port. When I asked went to pay for it, the man asked me if I had a scuzzy or scuzzy compatible port. Looking quite surprised, I said, "no," failing to see the relevency. The man then replied, "I'm sorry, but this is a scuzzy modem and requires a scuzzy port to install." I had to fight back my laughter until I exited the store, which was rather hard since it took me a good 10 minutes to explain to the guy that a scuzzy modem was about the most useless and rediculous devices that anyone ever made and that it was a serial modem.

I work as a Mac tech for one of the bigger isp providers in the Southern part of the US and I was working on calling back customers to halp them get connected when the other techs can't. Because I am a Mac tech in a building of PC users. I get alot of easy call-backs.

This one call back the customer could not got connected. He was geting authintecation errors. The tech tried to check the the tcp/ip settings and the freePPP settings as well. They eaven tried retyping the password. The customer had called 5 times in two days geting the same errors. One customer wanted to sent the case to our NOC.And another told the customer to call SOS Apple.

That is where I got the call. I called the costumer and asked if he was still having problems connecting. He told me no. I asked what the problem was and was informed that the user name had the first letter in caps.

Bouth my supervisor and the other supervisors could not help but find it funny.

One of my users asked another one of my users if he would e-mail her a blank Word document. It turns out that she wanted to write a letter but didn't have Word on her PC at home, so she was going to try to edit the blank .DOC in Notepad...

I wrote this, on not the happiest of days, a couple of years ago between taking fault calls.

Hope the formatting makes it through.

Owain

http://welcome.to/owain

There must be more to life than computers

Networks drives print queues users

Staring at a screen all day

Wishing fault calls would go away

Sometimes I wish I had a life

But then sometimes I grab the knife

Never mind it's pay-day soon

To pay the bills to rent the room

There must be more to life than computers

But if there is it doesn't suit us

They call us names like nerd and geek

But oftentimes our help they seek

We may not be intellectuals

But we remember passwords, fix DLLs

And all those myriads of things

So that with joy they shout and sing

Their computers work, they smile with glee

But do they thank us, you and me

No we just do repetitive tasks

So they can take their tape drive and ram it up their @rse

We'll leave them to it, on their own

And they can weep and rant and moan

I'm yet another internet support technician working for a filtered (we block out stuff work looking at) internet service provider based out of Oregon. We had a guy calling between us, his long-distance provider, and the maker of his PC because he had incurred over $8000.00 worth of long-distance phone bills to the United Kingdom. When the issue hit my phone by luck of the draw, I proceeded (in the name of customer service) to step outside my support boudaries and assist the customer with tracking down what seemed to be happening. With my years of computer gaming experience solving various mysteries, I followed the clues to absolutely nowhere. The next day, one of the leads on my team headed over to this guy's house to see if he could help the customer discover any clues. They couldn't really track down anything, but this lead received a call from this customer the next afternoon. I received an ICQ from this lead a short time later stating:

Customer's Son setup account to a British ISP

Dialing into London.....

Phone Bill.... $8,000

Check next weeks paper for Obituary on son.

I was working for an technical support company providing support for an internet service provider.

I was working with the customer and had them start to configure there dial up networking connection. As I was replacing the TCP stack the customer said "Did you do that?"

I asked the customer what happened. He said his entire computer just shut down and his monitor is not working either. I told him I did not do any thing and i did not have control over his computer. It took the customer a while but he finally figured out he had a power outage. After that the customer said, "I guess I should call you back then, huh?" I though this was kind of unique to have the power go out while serviceing a call.

Later Dave

Working as techsupport for High level corporate end users I received a call one day from a supposed IT professional for this guys local Police Department that went like this:

Me: Thank you for calling.....my name is TJ can I get your name please?

EU: No you dont need my name to help me but I need to know where my device manager is.

Me: Okay sir if you will right click on your desktop and go to properties....

EU: What do I use to click on my desktop??

Me: Well sir you would use your mouse.

EU: No my mouse rolls on my desktop you dont know what you are talking about.

Me: Sir if you will take your mouse and point the pointer to the empty part of the desktop and right click on it you will pull up a screen you can choose properties from.

EU: (Knocking Loudly on his Desk) Cant you hear that noise that is my desktop what in the H*** am I supposed to use to click on it my mouse isnt doing anything but moving the arrow on my screen....

Needless to say I had to mute out and laugh hystericaly and then go back and use very child like terms with this supposed IT professional.

I do tech support for a company that offers a range of

software products, like photo editing software, and page layout products

and the like.

We also have a product that manages fonts. With the new OS 9 for the

Mac on the market this program needs upgrading/dating.

I had this woman on the phone who was desperate to get a copy.

but alas, no stock, nowhere. Our sales dept. didn't have any, her local dealers didn't have any.

Nobody could help her out.

So we're talking about the situation, and at some point she tells me

'I am willing to prostitute myself to get a copy.'

So there I was, sitting with all her contactdetails in front of me,

copy of the said application in my drawer, thinking:' hmmmm

what to say next?' I came very close to telling her that if she paid

for the transportation i'd come over and bring a copy with me and do some business...

But.. I didn't, what can i say, I'm a professional. (hahahaha)

A long time ago in a insurance company far away...

I was working on a 3 person helpdesk for a Florida based

insurance company. The helpdesk was responsible for all of

the Florida offices. It was also responsible for any

electronic device therein. This usually made from some

interesting calls. But there is one in particular that comes

to mind:

Me: Good morning XXX Helpdesk, Amy Speaking.

Miami Office User: Hi there. I was wondering if you could help me with

something.

Me: Sure.

Miami Office User: How do I print my voicemail?

Stunned silence from me.

Me: Could you repeat that please? My phone is acting up.

(Not really but I wanted to make sure I heard this right.)

Miami Office User: No problem. I said " How do I print my

voicemail?"

Me: One moment please..

I put her on mute and told my colleague what was going on. I

placed the user on speakerphone so my colleague could hear

my answer (after we stopped laughing of course).

Me: Do you have a pencil??

Miami Office User: Yes.

Me: Use that.

Needless to say the user was embarrased and the call ended.

PS- I later spoke to the user again and found out one of the

office VPs was talking about voice recognition programs. The

user thought we had hooked one of those up to the phone system

so she wouldn't have to transcribe her voicemails.

I was working as tech support for a rather large software game company. For some stupid reason we'd decided to start selling a 3d graphics card back when 3d cards were just starting to pick up. It was based on the old Rendition verite chip if that's any indication.

So to promote the card we had added the support into a few of our big selling games. One favorite game having to do with nascar type cars seemed to be a real favorite of the, shall we say, computer dysfunctionals from the south/south east regions. Inbreeding will do that to you.

One day I had a customer call me and ask why our video card was not working with his new big brand name box. We finally deteremined that he had a video card that was part of his mother board. Our video card would often not automatically over ride the on board chipsets. I advised him that he'd need to contact his system manufacturer and see if he could either set a jumper or disable the card in the bios. If not the card wasn't going to work but he could return it under our policy.

He seemed to grok the general concept that this other chip was not letting him use his new card. And he really wanted to use it. So off he went to talk to the manufacturer and the call was over.

A few days passed and the person next to me got a call. I was idle at the time so I listened in. It was of course the same guy back again. The tech taking the call pulled his records up and saw that what we had been over already. Trying to resolve the call quickly she told him she saw the information from a previous call and that the card still wouldn't work if he hadn't gotten that information from his system manufacturer.

There was a moment of silence as he responded to her. Her face suddenly took on a look of total horror and she managed to eek out "Oh my god...". After a few moments she confirmed his address and said that he would be getting his package in a few days time and hung up.

By now we were all eager to hear what was up. She filled us in. Apparently he had contected his manufacturer and it looked like it was going to be impossible to turn off the on board card. Some how he had gotten the name of the video manufacturer from them. So he took matters into his own hands.

"Well, I just rooted aroun' on that there board and found me the little chip that said sIruss lOjic. Then I just grabbed up my wire snippers and just cut all them little wires till I could pull that thing off'n there."

We were all shocked and laughing at the same time. She tolled us.. the card worked perfectly now.. and he was just calling to get an updated set of drivers!

I'm so glad to be out of tech support... =)

Hi, the following happened a few months ago.

I work for an ISP as tech support. I got a call and the guy on the other end of the line was someone who had called quite a few times already and had always talked to a colleague of mine. So he ask me to speak my colleague and I put him on hold. I call the other guy to transfer the call to him. Now we always talk to each other first before transferring the caller. So he goes an says to me to kid "you son of a bitch". Unfortunately I had pressed transfer already so the first thing the client heard was "You son of a bitch". AAs you might guess the call continiued with a lot of apologies.

I work tech support for one of the big OEMs. Took a call from a guy who had just wiped his hard drive and needed assistance reinstalling Windows NT Workstation. I'll leave aside the fact that the guy claimed to be the network admin and didn't know how to do an o/s installation, and get to the funny part. We got to the point in the install where NT asks for your name and the name of your company.

ME: Okay, go ahead and type in your name and the name of the company.

HIM: Okay, hang on a second.

[I hear some very slow typing, then half a dozen fast clicks -- sounded like he was backspacing. Then more slow typing and then more backspacing. Finally (still typing) he decides to update me on his progress]

HIM: Sorry, I'm not much of a typer. I'm more of a pecker.

Had to mute him while he finished the difficult task of typing his own name so I could share the story with my coworkers.

I received a call from a corporate PC user who said that she "couldn't shut down her computer", and that the "It's safe to shutdown" screen wouldn't "go away". I went down to check it out, and, sure enough, she was turning her monitor off and on.

I'm not really Tech Support at the moment, but I've been there and seen some of the stories and been on the receiving end of some of them in my time on Helpdesk and as a sysop/admin. I've had a couple of calls slightly out of the ordinary... and I guess I'll put two in (since a lot have already been covered repeatedly over the last couple of months archives)... 'cause I know that we all get stuff like this from time to time *L*

"My password doesn't work!"

One of the companies I used to work for had just rolled out a new front-end applicaton for Windoze to access an AS/400 in the background doing all the work. Anyway, this user calls up saying that their password wasn't working. After a reasonably lengthy conversation (and resetting their password on the host system) it turned out that they thought it wasn't being recognised because all they were seeing was ******* when they typed in their password *sigh* I didn't have the heart to ask them what they would ahve done if they were logging in directly and didn't see anything at all...

"I forgot my password..."

Three days ago...

A user calls in through the helpdesk wanting a password reset on one of their Unix hosts. Fair enough. BUT... in the course of the conversation to verify they were who they were, they mention that they only just changed it the day before!

Okay, so I was mean to 'em *chuckle* but it went straight over their head when I reset the password to Id10t :-P~

Gee it makes ya feel so much better though *hehehe*

Quick story. I used to manage an ISP tech support office and having answered quite a few calls beforehand, I can't forget the husband who asked me how he could "Download some more free time for his wife as a present".

And yes, I honestly did have the little old lady who asked me what to do because she had just preformed an "illegal operation". She didn't want to get in trouble.

About 10 years ago, a VP to a real big account of ours, came

into the store to purchase a personal computer. He bought

all the software he thought he would need and left. A couple

of hours later, he called in and said that his software

working.

I believed him, and told him to ship out his copy to us, and

I would send him another copy right away. A few days later

he called saying that this copy was defective, and he was

threatening to return his entire purchase. I convinced him

to let me come out and check it out. (BTW, I did check the

original copy, and it looked to be completely erased.) I

went to his office, taking a new floppy disk drive, thinking

it might have something to do with it.

When I got there, I checked his FDD and it was okay. I

checked his copy of the software, it was no good. So I gave

him a new copy and told him do do exactly like he had done

before.

He opened up the manual and read to me the part it says

about making a copy of the original disks and using the

copies. So he got up and walked over to a photocopy

machine, and was about to make a copy of the original disk.

I was assisting a customer with installing a NIC into a PCI slot in her computer, or so I thought. I described for a good 10 minutes how to take the shell off. She wanted to have it done by the time her 1st grade son came home on the bus so he would be surprised. He was surprised alright! Anyway, I finally she got the case off and described all the wires and wierdness inside. Working in tech support I am used to people being surprised when they see the inside of the computer for the first time. The next 20 minutes revolved around where to put the card. She kept saying she could see the slots for it but she didnt see how it would work because how would it plug into the ethernet cable? Well just when I was about at the end of my rope and ready to slit my wrists, she says "DAMMIT he's home!" Then I hear the door open and a tiny little voice says "MOM! What are you doing to my monitor!?"

This tale is from a while ago (1993) when the first Pentiums were hitting the market and 486s were pretty much top of the line for home users. (I was 13 at the time.)

My parents purchased a Craphard Hell (you figure it out) in 1992 that had a Intel 486SX 25 MHz processor. We wanted to upgrade to one of the new Overdrive chips that Intel came out with as well as adding 256K external cache to the motherboard. The technical manuals that came with the system (oh those were the days, when you could actually get printed documentation for the computer you just dropped $2000 on) said that the motherboard would support up to a 486DX2 66MHz. We called Packard Bell tech support to ask about the specifications for the external cache we wanted to add to the motherboard. The tech looked up the info for us and we thanked him.

My dad, always wanting to make sure that he didn't do something that would screw up the computer, asked the tech about any specific concerns we needed to worry about when we upgraded to the Overdrive processor. The tech explained what it would involve and that it may be a little difficult to get the processor to seat correctly on the LIF (low insertion force) socket.

The tech asked what speed of processor we planned on purchasing. My father told him the 486DX2 66. The tech told us that that processor would not work on that specific motherboard. He said that it would only support a 50MHz chip. The manuals that we had right in front of us and open to the jumper settings pages said that the 66MHz chip would work and we told him so. The tech said that we were wrong and that only a 50MHz chip would work. We argued with him for 15 minutes (long distance to California from Iowa) and finally my father ended the call.

I asked my dad what chip he thought we should get. He said "I don't care what that idiot on the phone said, we're putting the 66MHz chip in because the manual says it will work." Needless to say, we put in a 66MHz chip and the external cache. Everything worked fine and the system showed that it was indeed recognizing it as a 66MHz 486.

So much for the "all-knowing techs".

P.S. The techs who write into this site often complain about the idiocy of the (l)users they deal with. I agree that most of the problems that they must deal with are extremely simple problems that just require a little common sense. However, it seems that many of these extremely brilliant tech support personnel need to go back to high school and take a basic English course in grammer, punctuation, and spelling (especially the spelling). Come on... proofread your tales before you submit them. (And if that's not the problem - learn how to write properly.)

Scott H.

Student - Public Relations Major

Hello, thank you for calling tech support. How can I help you?

I'm having trouble installing my new card game.

What seems to be the problem?

Every time I try to install it the computer turns off.

I see, that's odd. Can you walk me through installing the software?

Okay. I put the disk in and it asks me if I want to install my card game. Then I click 'next' and it tells me that I need to close any open programs. Since Windows is the only program I have running I shut it down. That's when the computer turns off.

(mute button)

One of my fellow techs took a call from a very frustrated caller who had installed and uninstalled his program several times. The caller, very embarrassed, told the tech he was getting the error message, "Cannot find file f*** you."

The upset caller had apparently responded less than daintily to one of the installer's prompts, naming the file, you guessed it, "f*** you."

This story is true only the names were changed to protect the stupid

it took place in a regular chatroom on IRC involving myself and a person that works for a major isp and a few other people.

needless to say this person is a total moron

(Moron) I need help!!

(ME) With what Moron?

(Moron) drivers

(ME) saoftware drivers?

(Moron) drivers for my speakers

(ME) sound card drivers

(ME) what sound card is it

(Moron) no the speakers themselves

(Moron) I need drivers for my speakers. They don't have any writing on them or anything. They are for my compaq. Thye slide onto the side of the compaq 1400 monitor and like hook on on built in hooks

(Techpro) No drivers for those, Lorcan.

(ME) no drivers for them

(Moron) then how come it keeps asking for the drivers ever since I had to reinstall everything

(ME) Sound card

(Moron) It says please select drivers and I don't have a disk for them

(Moron) and I don't have sound

(Techpro) You don';t -have- drivers for speakers unless they're USB.

(Moron) no the sound card has its drivers

(Moron) I need the drivers for the speakers

(Moron) ther like 5 years old

(Techpro) Talk to Compaq, then. I sold those models, and they do NOT come with drivers for the speakers.

(ME) not usb then

(ME) turn the volume up

(Moron) I just hooked the speakers up today and now every time I start computer it says new hardware found and it wants the drivers

(Moron) They don't have volume control

(Techpro) They don't have drivers, Lorcan.

(ME) knob on the front of the monitor

(Moron) its on ten

(Moron) but only static comes out of them

(ME) is it a presario

(Bystander2) plug them in right jack????

(Moron) I can't get volume controll on windows at all for them

(Moron) they are pluged in right

(Moron) They plug into the back of the monitor like stereo speakers

(ME) double check the connection

(Techpro) No drivers, sorry.

(Moron) There is static coming out of the speakers

(Moron) but windows want's drivers for them

(ME) check the connection to the back of the computer

(Bystander) Go the the website for the company and download the drivers from there.

(Moron) the wires are in the clips

(ME) he wants drivers for speakers

(Moron) I can't download the drivers Bystander if there is no name on them

(Techpro) I'm afraid that those speakers do not USE drivers, Lorcan. Speakers simply don't use them. I don't know much more plainly I can explain this.

(Moron) I understand matt but windows doesn't

(Moron) it is telling me that they are a device that uses drivers

(bystander2) Call tech support and ask them. Its a pain in the butt but hey, if ya gotta ya gotta.

(ME) is your monitor a 1400?

(Moron) yes ME

(Moron) presario

* Techpro sighs.

(ME) Looking

(Moron) I have all kinds of stuff I wan't to listen to but I can't get anything to work

(Moron) I even took my friends speakers and they wan't drivers to but they hook up to the tower not the monitor.Also there is a headphone jack on the monitor and it won't let me hook headphones up. They go in but no sound comes out

(Bystander3) are the headphones the correct impedence (ohm value)?

(Moron) I have no clue

(bystander4) ahah

(bystander4) get new drivers for monitor

(Bystander3) there's high and low, and they're not interchangeable

(ME) what is the number on the case

(Moron) # of case??

(Moron) what do you mean # of case?

(ME) should say compaq presario ######

(Moron) i wish my mom would let me just use her computer for the internet

(Moron) Compaq presario 1400

(Techpro) Ah, well. Guess I play with the new Dell system I have here with Win2000 and the flat-panel speakers. Neato.

(Moron) when it comes to computers I'm not good at the hardware and hardware instillation. I can figure any program out real quick though and I can take apart tv's & radios and put them back together with ease. When I was smaller I read tv, vcr, and radio books because computers were still newer. that was 8-9 years ago

(ME) ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp11501-12000/SP11655.exe here see if this works

(ME) that is the only thing i can find

(ME) also read this ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp11501-12000/SP11655.txt

(Moron) what do I do with the file???

(ME) read the second url

(Moron) ok

(ME) download the first one and read or print out the second one

(Moron) ok

* Moron sighs

(Moron) be back in a second have to reboot

*** Moron has quit IRC

*** *********** is now known as Moron

(Moron) taht didn't work

(Moron) stil no speakers

(ME) no shit it didn't work Moron

(ME) oops

(ME) no drivers for speakers

(Moron) its saying I don't have an active mixer device

(TechPro) Active Mixer Device is your sound card drivers, moron.

No stupid user this time ... just something *much* too weird that I must share.

On our call center for (big financial institution), the first task in any call is to verify the user's contact document in our system. Usually this is a fairly straight-forward affair, us reading off what we have, the user verifying it.

Now, I like to be playful with callers; it keeps the call friendly and easier to deal with for both of us. If I can get a chuckle out of the user, I know it's going to be a good call no matter what it's about.

So, I get a call from a user in Wisconsin, and we begin the routine:

Me: Phone number is ###-###-####?

Her: Yes.

Me: Fax is ###-###-####?

Her: Yes.

Me: In the _____ building?

Her: Yes.

Me: Internal mailstop is _____?

Her: Yes.

Me: #th floor, cube ###?

Her: Yes.

Me: Alternate contact is _____?

Her: Yes.

Me: Company is ####?

Her: Yes.

Me: Cost center is ####?

Her: Yes.

Me: You're in the ____ department?

Her: Yes.

Me: Username is ____?

Her: Yes.

Me: Host ID is ____?

Her: Yes.

Me: (feeling playful) And you have a cat named Mitzi?

Her: (dead silence for 5 full seconds) Uh, not exactly, but the girl who had this computer before me did, and there's a picture of the cat on the screen ...

Me: (boggle!) Uh ... uhm ... eep.

I *swear* it was just a wild guess, I was shooting for a giggle (always helps to loosen up a user before getting into the problem). I did NOT expect to have a Twilight Zone moment with her Windows background image!

It was all I could do to not answer the next phone call "Psychic Friends Hotline!"

Well, the other day my boyfriend came over and turned on the computer I had built for him a few weeks ago. Basically it's just a pile of spare parts thrown together. Anyways, he turns it on and it gets a disk boot failure. He casually says, "uh, I think somethings wrong here." Me, just figuring it was a loose cable, leans down on the ground beside the computer, and as I put my hand down to steady myself, it lands in a small wet spot. I pick up the computer and move it to the side to reveal a large spot that reeks of urine. My dog had taken a leak right on the computer! And he NEVER goes to the bathroom in the house.

One of our user's password expired, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not seem to change it herself. Finally I offered to change it for her. She wanted her password to be "hername*99" So I dutifully changed her network password. Later she calls me and says the network won't accept her password. I verify that she wants her password to be hername*99, spelling it out letter by letter. I set her password again. Still the network would not accept it when she tried to log in. Finally I just went to her desk. As she watches I type her password: hername*99. She says "That is exactly what I am doing, except I don't hold down the shift key when I type the asterisk." Rather than argue, I just went and changed her password to hername899.

I work for a software company where you would assume that people would know a little more about computers. One of our lead application developers sent us an email with a problem he was having:

My computer is making an unusually loud grinding noise and I suspect that my CPU Fan Belt is broken.

I do tech support all week for a living so of course on weekends friends call and ask for help with their own systems. A friend had a new PC and was trying to connect to her ISP and called me from her apartment saying it wouldn't work. After asking a series of questions, we finally determined that there was no dial tone. I asked if she was sure it was plugged into a good phone outlet. "You mean it has to be plugged into the phone line? I thought that was why you needed a modem, so you could connect without a phone". So I explained how to find the Line connection in the back of the modem and plug in the cord, then to plug the other end into the wall. Before I could say "But you will disconnect me when you unplug the phine to plug in the modem".....Click...I got the dial tone.

Performing tech support for an accounting software that includes payroll always provides a challenge at the beginning of the year when it comes time to print W-2's. One user had replaced printers since last year and didn't think about it when he bought the W-2 forms. He called in panicky and wanted to know if he fed the NCR paper multi-part W-2 forms through his laser printer, would all the copies print?

I have been in this business too long (about 6 years) and laugh my butt off

at least once a day. TG for MUTE buttons! Here are a couple

of stories. . .

(1) I used to work for a help desk corp store where we sold all

kinds of odds and ends. I get this call one day from the asst. mngr.

of a store who is foreign and didn't speak any english.

While I'm trying to figure out what he is saying, meanwhile

every minute or so, he would let out the blood curdling scream.

I kept asking him what's wrong, but not understanding what

he was saying. I kept hearing this buzz through the phone,

and after about 5 screams later and me just being

frazzled, I heard him say the word "power cord". The man

was electrocuting himself from touching bare wires from the PC adapter cord

that was plugged in!!

(2)Working for the same place a couple of months later, another

asst. mngr. calls and says that keyboard won't work. I hear

the keyboard beeping in the background. Ask the customer if

he spilt anything in it, and he says "no". After 5 mins of

trouble shooting and then telling him that I'm sending out

a replacement, he pipes up and says " Umm would the keyboard

stop working if I got sick?" Now thinking something very

strange is going on I ask, "Oh, what kinda 'sick' did you get?"

He says "Well I was here late last night and threw up in my

keyboard." I was very proud of holding back my frustration and

told the user "Yes, my dear that would cause the keyboard to

stop working." . . . .

I'm a network consultant. One of my clients is a small accounting office. Small enough, in fact, that they lease space to another company. The accountant is, surprisingly enough, reasonably computer-literate. The office manager of the second company, however, is not. Further, she is the sort who attempts to make her own lack of knowledge someone else's fault. You all know the type -- the type who continually snipes at people. Nothing's ever good enough.

The accountant comes in one morning, goes into his corner office, and barely has time to set down his briefcase and take off his coat before the office manager is in his office sniping at him. She informs him that the network is down, and what's more, the phone system isn't answering. The diatribe continues as he moves into the server room, with her following along behind and ranting about inferior equipment and consultants in general. This being a small office, the server-room also doubles as a sort of break-room (on one side), with the computer equipment and paper files on the other side.

He goes in there, and the first thing he notices is that there's something new on the rack that holds the server, router, and phone system. He points to the miniature crock-pot there, which contains cheese sauce intended for an office-party. He points to it and requests that she remove it; after all, he says, the last thing he needs is cheese sauce all over his server.

Meanwhile, he's scratching his head. The server, router, phone system -- everything is simply powered off. Power switches don't work at all. While he's musing over possible causes, he catches sight of the office manager as she reaches down to unplug the crock-pot... from the UPS that powers the equipment.

He reset the breaker on the UPS, and amazingly enough, everything powered back up. He then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to explain why an 800 VA UPS cannot be used to operate a 1000 Watt Crock-Pot.

At one point, the office-manager, irritable as always, demands to know, "So why did the circuit-breaker blow?" It was all he could do to not reply, "So it didn't burn the place down, you *****!"

My first ever job was as an AP in a small software house in the UK. We used VB to write your standard type bunsiness information systems - you know - pretty front end and a DB. Anyway, because we were small we all had to take support calls as well as make the coffee etc etc. We mainly dealt with large punters, but there was the occasional smaller outfit (usaually retailers) who gave us some absolute gems:

*There was I guy I sent a 3 5.25 disk upgrade to a DOS system - he phones me up to say that the disks don't work. I ask if he put disk 1 in and ran install.bat - he said "oh - I put the first 2 disks in but the other won't fit!"

*The clerical assitant (*absolute truth*) who asked if we could supply a bigger mouse mat because he couldn't reach the edge of the screen. I felt so bad for him I explained that the mouse ball was the important part and the pad *did not* have a 'magnetic tracking sensor' (WTF is that?) inside.

*The Luser who complained of unexpected shutdowns when in fact the powersaver was set to 1 minute! I could have killed the joker that set that up - I had to go out and fix that one!

*"I've just started working at ****'s and your software is crap. I cant even find it (try getting yourself an NT logon spak).

I have blown it myself a few times though. In my first month at work i would type toooooo fast at the command prompt and twice ran c:\windows)del *.* instead of c:\windows)del A:\*.*

I also sent an update out with the instruction:

"Insert dick into drive A"

....

Simon

Who says users are the only problem children? I went to print this morning and found my jobs going off across to the other end of the floor. Seems one of my brilliant co-

workers decided instead of calling the mailroom for another dry ink cartridge, it was easier to reset my computer to print over there. Jeez, thanks. Now, I sent my job to the same unserviced printer without knowing that there are now at least 17 other large print jobs in the printer memory. Sigh. I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. However, I will remember myself to lock down my workstation at ALL times now. At least I still get paid for this. :)

At my job we are implementmenting a new system, I got a call from a user who wanted to know why we had to upgrade, the old system worked fine! I told the user "the old system won't work past December 31, 1999!" The person went quiet and I never heard from them again. Needless to say, we had been going through the upgrade for the past 4 years and he never knew that!

1. Home is where you hang your @.

2. The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail.

3. A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.

4. You can't teach a new mouse old clicks.

5. Great groups from little icons grow.

6. Speak softly and carry a cellular phone.

7. C:\ is the root of all directories.

8. Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice.

9. Pentium wise, pen and paper foolish.

10. The modem is the message.

11. Too many clicks spoil the browse.

12. The geeks shall inherit the earth.

13. There's no place like (http://www.home.com)

14. Don't byte off more than you can view.

15. Fax is stranger than fiction.

16. What boots up must come down.

17. Windows will never cease.

18. Virtual reality is its own reward.

19. Modulation in all things.

20. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day;

Teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.

Tech: Welcon to *** can I help you?

Customer: I have a question about ths green box I have in my frount yard. Someone just hit it with there car. Would this effect my ability to connect to the server?

-------

The "green box" is box that holds all the phone cords for his area.

I called the company responsible for my electronic payments on my carloan to change my information and add a note to my file. I was informed that they couldn'tdo this. Keep in mind this is customer service I'm talking to.

"Hmm," I say, "you can only see my information, and can't update it?"

"That's correct."

"And you can't put in a note that I've called."

"That's correct."

"So how do you update records when someone moves or changes payments?"

(Getting testy) "We are unable to make any changes to your account at all."

"That doesn't sound very convenient..."

(Her rather harsh reply) "Well, if you knew *anything* about computers..."

Needless to say I disrupted the entire Internal Assistance Center for a major software company when I loudly explained to the poor woman that I had almost 20 years working with computers and did the same job she did, I was just obviously better at it. It took my coworkers several minutes to regroup. I was then able to speak to someone who changed my account and added the note.

I called a company I was buying computer components from. They asked for all of my pertinent information, including verification of who I am. Then the polite person I was speaking to informed me that they couldn't give me the status of my order, even with my account number. When I asked why they informed me that they didn't keep that information.

"What do you mean, you don't keep that information. How do you know who I am?"

"We don't keep that information here."

"You have my account number, yes?"

"Yes"

"And you have all of my information I just gave you, yes?"

"Yes"

"And you can't tell me the status of my order because...?"

(I S**t you not)"We don't have the account numbers in the computer."

"You don't use the account number you gave me to track my account?"

"Um, yeah."

"And you can't look up my order by my name?"

"Uh... yes, that's correct."

(My incredulous reply) "What do you use to track them then, a rolodex?"

Followed promptly by "when you DO find my order, cancel it immediately."

Work at large company about 600 total computers running NT. User: I have a blue screen with a lot of numbers on it and I can not get anything to work.

Me: Ok I need you to reboot your computer.

User: OK just a minute.

5 seconds pass

User: Nope its still there.

Now how do you politly tell them to turn the computer off not the monitor......

once i called gateway tech support for some problem i was having...the tech was going to help me back up some files and reinstall a program...well he asked if i had any blank floppies....well i spend alot of time on the computer ...but not using disk and such...well i

had only known "floppies" as the big floppy disk of a few years ago...so here i go looking everywhere for a blank floppy...the tech was being so patient with me...i knew a few years ago i had seen a case my husband had with several of the floppies i was looking for in it...but i couldn't find that case anywhere...i tore my desk apart...the closet apart...i was trying so hard to hurry cause i didn't want to waste the techs time...nor did i want to appear stupid...well finally i found in the bottom of a drwaer a floppy...it was called the "fat rat" i told tech support i had found this one...now never did he know i was looking for the kind of floppy that i was...he says he would rather not use something of my husbands that had something on it..." don't you have just one blank floppy?" "well i thought we did...but i can't find one" he sounded flusttered so i said i would call back later after i talked to my husband and located a blank floppy...he agreed..i then called my husband and told him the story...well he could not stop laughing...he said.."honey the cabinet on the desk is full of boxes with blank floppy disk in them...i told him " no its not...all that's in there are small hard disk...not the floppy ones" so much for not wanting to appear stupid..huh??

I work as a tech support for a portrait studio company. We have studios in National Chain retail stores. Our systems consist of 3 PC's linked with an ethernet in each studio. We frequently send software updates to the studios with explicit instructions for installation. Since our software is DOS environment and not Windows, most installations consist of turning off the computer, inserting a floppy disk, turning it on and waiting for it to give a "Disk copy complete, turn off computer and remove disk" message. Pretty basis stuff. Now comes the tough part. One of the computers in the system uses one piece of software, while the other 2 computers use a different piece of software. If one were to look at the labels on the diskettes it would be pretty hard to install the wrong software on the wrong computer. Not so, frequently the softare is mixed up. Not a big deal if mixed up in one direction, but not as easy to fix if mixed up in the other direction. My usual method for the later is to copy the root directory from a computer that hasn't been screwed up and then go to the computer with the bad software load, delete the root directory files and copy from the diskette to the root of the screwed up hard drive. My usual command to copy to the diskette is a global copy, C:\)COPY *.* A: (ENTER). Verbally it would sound like this. COPY SPACE ASTERICK PERIOD ASTERICK SPACE A COLON ENTER. I have done this hundreds of time. With one associate I was not able to get this simple command to make the copy. I repeated the process many time, making her repeat back to me as she entered each key stroke. Finally after about 30 minutes of frustration I discovered that she understanding the "A:" to be a ":". She was not typing the letter A, but was using it as a part of my sentence and not part of the command itself.

Gomer, Gomer, Gomer

Several little stories from various computer-related places I have worked throughout my career...

-Scott-

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

While working as an operator in my university's main computer lab, I received a frantic e-mail message from one of the physics researchers:

"Help, my printout is all duck!"

After a few minutes of laughing at the mental image of this guy picking up what he expected to be a printout of columns of subatomic data and instead finding ASCII renditions of ducks, I collected myself and emailed him back to see what exactly he meant by that. But, I never got a reply.

About a year later I was reminiscing with some of my co-workers and that story came up. As a joke, I turned to my computer and sent email to that researcher and said "Your printout is duck." Not a minute later I received a reply: "Thank you, I will come later to see." But, he never did, so I never got to find out what "duck" meant.

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

The main computer lab at our university had late hours, and it would sometimes get really boring... two employees stuck in an office until midnight and a lab full of newbie freshman working on their projects. It was inevitable that to relieve the routine we'd concoct pranks from time to time. Among them:

* Choosing a lab terminal at random, and then redefining the main system printer queue to point to that terminal device instead of the printer. Every time someone would try to print, the file would scroll up that randomly-selected luser's screen instead.

* Fun with escape sequences: On occasion we would broadcast escape sequences to various user screens that would do things such as turn the screen upside down or remove the bottom half of every character. Our office had a peephole that allowed us to spy on the lab. The general chain of events would be: 1) Luser abruptly stops typing and pulls slightly away from screen, 2) Luser types a few keystrokes and stops. 3) Luser begins hitting keys randomly, 4) Luser asks someone else for help, the new person repeats steps 2 and 3. 5) With about 2-3 people gathered around, Luser begins pounding keys. 6) Finally, Luser gets up and heads towards our office to ask for help. Of course the moment we would see the luser get up we'd transmit the escape sequence that resets the screen to normal, so that when the luser would have us come take a look there would be nothing wrong with their screen at all.

* Similar to the above... broadcasting several hundred BEL characters to some unlucky luser's terminalm and all eyes in the lab immediatly turn to that person wondering what the hell they had just screwed up.

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

We had a new night operator, and one night I was the only other employee on duty. It was quiet, so I decided to stir things up a little. One of the operator's tasks was to respond to any system error messages that may pop up from time to time. So, I composed a fake system error message indicating that the hard disk array had "wound down" and needed to be "wound back up", then broadcast this to his terminal.

After a few moments, he called and asked me what the message meant. I explained, biting my lip, that the hard disks were spring-wound and needed to be wound up on a daily basis to keep them spinning, so all he needed to do was turn the key on the back of each drive unit until it was tight.

A few minutes later, thinking for sure that there was no way he believed me, I went back to the mainframe room to check on him. I got there just in time, he had the hard disk array cabinet open looking for the wind-up key.

About a year later a similar prank played on another new employee had the same results. In this person's case the fake error message indicated that the hard disk array was low on oil.

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

One day while working the day shift at the computer lab, I brought in a coffee maker and set it up in the operator's office. We had several coffee drinkers and when the fairly-new night guy arrived, we were all standing around in his office drinking coffee and told him how to use the machine. But, he was not a coffee drinker and so wasn't interested. Soon afterwards we all left for the day, leaving him for his first night working alone.

A few hours into his shift there was a knock on his door. He opened the door and greeted one of the university's math professors, a man with a very thick Korean accent. "I am here for the hot coffee", the professor said.

"Excuse me?" said the operator.

"Hot coffee, I want the hot coffee," said the professor.

The operator walked toward the coffee pot in total disbelief that thanks to us it would now be his responsibility to serve coffee to the users. He noticed that there was only about half an inch left in the pot, and turned back to the professor. "There's not much left, and it's really old. I don't know how to make more, are you sure you want some?", he asked the professor.

The professor then pointed to the line printer in the operator's office. It was at that point that the operator realized that the professor had actually been asking for the "hard copy" of a document he had printed earlier in the evening.

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

Our university had three campuses in the metro area, the main campus and two smaller campuses devoted to specialized subjects. We provided computing support for the main campus and one of the smaller campuses. The third campus had its own computer system and its own support department that its students were supposed to use.

However, there was one luser at that campus who got it in his mind that he should call us, not his campus's department, whenever he had a problem. In all reality I couldn't blame him, the support hours at his campus were very limited, while our support was available 7am to midnight 6 days a week. Yet, our policy prohibited us from helping him, as I told him on many occasions. But he insisted on calling us anyway.

Finally one day I felt pity for him, but only a tiny shred of it. He called up for help, and I made up a poem on the spot and told him that if he memorized that poem, anytime he needed help he could recite it to me and then I would help him.

He did. And he made full use of it. Many times. Oh well.

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

It can happen to any of us, I admit I am not immune. The terminal server in our library was dying, so I needed to install a new controller card in it. I gathered the card and all the tools I needed, went to my car, and drove over to the library to swap the cards.

When I arrived I shut down the terminal server and removed the old card. But then I couldn't find the new card. I searched all around me, and figured I must have left it in the car. I looked all through my car, nothing. Figuring I must have left it on my desk, I drove back to my building.

When I arrived, a co-worker quickly pulled me into his office, where a perplexed-looking student was sitting. My co-worker then handed me the controller card. I said, "Yeah, that's what I was coming back for." My co worker then said, "I figured as much. This young lady brought it in, she saw it fly off the roof of your car as you were driving down the road."

I returned to the library with the traumatized card and crossed fingers. Incredibly, the card still worked perfectly. So, the boss never had to find out. :)

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

Our computer system had to be shut down one day when a squirrel got loose in the mainframe room.

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

I was giving a new employee the tour and had him back in the mainframe room. While explaining the overall features of the equipment, I gave him the standard warning about not hitting a certain key on a specific keyboard in there because it would instantly halt the entire system. He thought I was joking and immediately pressed the button. A second later you could hear a dozen groans from the lab next door as everyone lost their work.

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

While working for a web development company one of my projects was the coding of a massive online Methods & Procedures Manual for a new customer support center one of our clients was opening. Believe it or not, the following was one of the instruction sets I had to build into this system:

How to Repair A Damaged Document

1) Brush off any loose dirt.

2) Smooth out any crinkles in the paper.

3) Rejoin any tears by using clear adhesive tape.

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We had built an online game similar to "Name That Tune", small clips of music would be played and players would have to try to identify the songs. One day we got email from one of the players:

"I love to play your game at school, but now I am home for the summer and the computer here doesn't have a sound card. Can you make a text-based version of the game?"

Uhhhhhhhhh.

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In 1995 I worked for a small local ISP. We had just contracted with a high school to provide internet service, and a co worker and I were sent out to hook them up and give the computer teacher a tutorial.

The teacher had his top student sitting in while we gave the presentation. Afterwards, the teacher showed us a web project this student had made as his final project for the semester... and told us how it was so great he was going to incorporate it into the school's new web site.

Sure, it was a good web project, but my co-worker and I immediately recognized it as a web site we had visited before, except this version had new graphics and this kid's name on it.

Busted!

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One of our web site clients was a guy whose contract allowed him FTP access to his web site. He used us for web development when he needed "complicated" changes and did the work himself if it was just simple text changes.

One day he called up and said that all the changes we had made to his site the day before were gone. I checked the site, and he was right. I asked if he had done anything, and he said no. I checked the permissions and modification times of the files, and they were all owned by his FTP account and had been modified earlier in the day. I asked him about that,, and he said yes, he had made some changes to some phone numbers, but didn't see what that could break. I asked him if he downloaded them from the web site first before changing them. No, he had used the original versions of the files from his hard drive.

I explained to him that by doing this he was using files that did not contain our revisions, that in the future he needed to always download the files from the web server first before changing them. he said he understood.

He didn't. For as long as I continued to work at this company the above was a weekly ritual with this particular luser, each time with him not understanding what he was doing wrong.

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When I worked at the university one of my responsibilities was to ensure network security. Our rules were pretty relaxed, we did not want to stifle creativity. But one rule we were very serious about (due to liability issues) was that no one who was not affiliated with the university could use our computer system. This included a rule that user accounts, with few exceptions and all of them subject to my department's approval, were only to be used by the person to whom they were assigned.

One particular user account raised a red flag when I noticed the amount of time it spent playing MUDs. Since the account belonged to a woman in her mid-40s, this seemed a little unusual, so I searched for the username in several newsgroups and discovered posts indicating that the account was being used by her teenaged son.

I contacted the owner of the account, and she explained that he helps her with her homework. I told her this was okay, but that she needed to be the actual user of the account and that he could not have unsupervised access to it. She agreed.

A few weeks later we received a report from another school that one of our users was trying to hack into their system. We traced it back to this same account, her teenaged son was at it again. I disabled the account and called her and her son in for a meeting. I told her this could not be tolerated. I had her changed the password and told her it could not happen again. I told them that if he needed to have use of the account to help her with the homework, she needed to deliver me a statement signed by her instructor granting such permission.

I never got the permission slip, and not much time went by before I saw her account in a MUD again. Suspicious, I killed the process. A moment later it logged back in and reconnected the MUD. I zapped it again. After a few repeats, my phone rang. It was her son, calling to ask if something was wrong with the network. he actually had the gall to call me and ask for tech support! I told him he was not allowed to use the system and that I was disabling the account pending another meeting with his mother. He got mad and told me that he didn't care, he didn't need the account anymore anyway because he just got hired as the technical head of a new internet company and would me making a lot more money than me.

A few weeks later one of the guys down the hall and I ordered a pizza for lunch. Guess who the delivery driver was? "This isn't my real job, I'm just doing a favor for a friend," he said.

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

One of my early web design clients was a mid-sized electric utility company. I was meeting with my contact one day going over a list of new features they wanted to incorporate into their web site. One of his requests was for an interactive map of the coverage area that, in the event of any power failure, would indicate where the outage was located and what areas were affected. I asked him what this would be used for. "So that if there is a storm, for instance, you can log in to see if your power is out, how widespread it is, and when it is expected to be fixed." I asked him, "Wouldn't the fact that the computer won't turn on in the first place answer the question as to whether the power is out?" The client immediately realized how ridiculous that had just sounded and said he'd have to go ask his boss about that one. The map idea never resurfaced.

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

I wish I could remember the circumstances that led up to it, but one night a luser in my university's main computing lab became so irate when he couldn't figure something out that the female operator on duty had to barricade herself in her office and call the police.

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

Some of the places I have worked at had *really* tight budgets, sometimes forcing us to have to improvise. Apart from traditional techniques such as using your teeth as wirecutters, sirestrippers, and a screwdriver, we also:

* had a building at our university whose entire network connection went through a connector whose pins were held together by scotch tape and superglue.

* used a computer for 15 months that has no chassis, occasionally needed a good whack to the site, had a homemade power switch, and had once caught fire.

* did a lot of "creative" wiring in order to network as many computers as possible with as little cable as possible.

One attepmt at frugality failed, however. A department insisted on us doing everything we could to get their 1960s printer to still be able to work when we upgraded out network. We gave it a shot, but the shower of sparks caused by the first file sent to it convinced that department to upgrade.

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

When I was doing web design back in early 1995 it seemed everyone who could be convinced to get a website wanted theirs to be the end-all be-all source for information. A few odd ones that I remember:

* "What to do in the Event of a Hurricane" - on the website of a small town in KANSAS.

* "What to do if you See a Rat" - ("Eeek! Honey! There's a rat in the kitchen!" "Okay, dear, let me log onto the City of XXXXXX website and find out what to do.")

* Or the client who called up irate that we hadn't posted his "Links" page yet. "These are important links, it is urgent that we get that page up.! This is the most important page on our site!" The links page consisted of a link to Yahoo and a link to the White House.

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

I was checking the night voicemail recordings. One of the calls was two minutes long. IT described the problem exactly, gave the serial number, the machine it was running on and the name of the user. Everything needed to do a simple fix of the problem. Except... no phone number, no address.

Poor guy....

The dreaded Monday morning call. Our software crashed. Ask What changed over the weekend - Nothing. Symptoms? This, that, error messages, codes, registers (m/f days!). After three days of extensive questioning, searching and testing, still no clue. Back to the customer - Are you SURE nothing changed? Oh, we did upgrade the operating system...

I was working tech support for an ISP in the year 1999. One day this lady called in and was having problems opening her Eudora on a PC. After an extensive search of her hard drive we could not find a trace of it. No problem, right? Not so fast.

We went onto her hard drive (our installer installs the installers). I had her goto My Computer and then her C drive and the folder we install called Internet. In that folder is a file called eudora.zip whichwe use as the installer. So I told her to double click on that icon....

She suddenly says "My screen just went black." I asked her if she could see anything on the screen. She said there was some cryptic writing. So I asked her what it said. She started reading off "c:\internet\eudora\..."

Finally it hit me. The zip file is self-extracting and this poor woman had never seen a DOS prompt. I couldn't believe how old I felt. Windows95 had only came out 4 years before and she'd never seen a DOS prompt.

This little tale doesn’t really have anything to do with a specific call I’ve taken—not really. But it has found its way into my personal store of folklore, and I thought you all might like to hear it.

This was a while ago, when I was working as a TSR for a company that did outsourcing for pretty large computer company (if you think that big-time OEM manufacturers do their own support these days, you another thing coming). Anyways, doing that type of support brought out many different types of users, but mainly the usual three: the stupid user, the rude user, and the worst combination, the stupid-and-rude user. Many of us were guilty of Mute Abuse, whereby that ever-so-handy mute function was used so that a tech could pause, insult the customer (their lineage, children, pets, etc…), recover, and continue the call with a good deal of the previous stress alleviated. We did this only every now and then, and only when the call demanded it (honest!). However, there was one tech…

We’ll call him Richard; simply because, well, that was his name (Dreadfully sorry, old boy—but anonymity is reserved for the innocent). The particular cube warrior was a work of art. On the phone, while actually talking to a customer, he was the most polite, professional person you have ever heard. He even got multiple Kudos (pat-on-the-backs called in by customers to the tech’s supervisor) on a daily basis.

However, many times during the call—I think we clocked him at ten in one sitting—he would use the mute button on his call box and proceed to utter a string of verbal concoctions that would make a season Army drill sergeant blush. Then, “click,” he would be back on the line, as sweet as an 80 year old Sunday school teacher. It was quite the thing to listen to.

In fact, a few of us were discussing Richard’s unique way of stress management one day on break. One of us (no names mentioned here) remarked, “Some day he’s gonna wear out that mute button. Can you imagine what would happen when he did?”

We all laughed a bit as the image of our good friend Richard appeared…but our laughter died down as almost simultaneously an evil look appeared in all our eyes. We ran out of the break room as fast as we could, stopping only for a moment at my cube so that I could pick up my Leatherman. It was Richard’s day off, so our next stop was to be his cube—but first, I needed to grab a dead call box from the supply (junk) room. Now, at that point in time our call center was using a few different types of call boxes. Some had flip switches, some had actual buttons, and some—like Richard’s—were a variation on the older Unex boxes, and had a slider-toggle switch. I grabbed a box that had recently gone to meet its maker, and we went to work. It was a simple matter to pop open both boxes to get at the insides, and within a matter of moments we had extracted our objects of interest—the mute switches. Now, the way these things worked was simple: the internal switch (inside the box) was just a little vertical plastic piece, and the external switch was composed of two vertical plastic prongs that clipped around the internal switch, moving it whenever the external was. Using the saw tool on my handy lil’ device, we removed the two prongs from the external switch on the old box, and replaced it with the external switch on Richard’s box. A few screws replaced, and the old defective box returned to its final resting place, we slunk off to our respective cubes to await the mirth that would ensue.

I was not there a few days later when Richard came back to work. But I’m told his first call of the day was a customer who had decided to install AOL 4.0, right when it first came out (you know, THAT version).

He wasn’t working there anymore when I arrived.

I felt pretty bad about the whole thing when I learned of the final result. But seeing as he went to a managerial position at a very prominent circuitry manufacturing company, and we were all laid off a few months later when our client decided to “relieve us of our obligation,” I think we did him a favor.

Still, to have been there when he realized that, yes, the mute switch was in the correct place, but, yes, the customer did just hear what he had to say…

It’s Karma, Rich. Karma.

Keep smiling, people. If you can’t have genuine sanity, at least try to fake it.

Customer called in wanting to install the software that they have received in the mail.

Tech: Thank you for calling Bellsouth.net Tech Support, my name is Bart may I have your E-Mail address please?

Customer: so_and_so@bellsouth.net

Tech: OK, what seems to be the problem?

Customer: "Well, I received the Bellsouth.com CD in the mail and I can't get my internet."

Tech: Have you inserted the CD into the CD-ROM?

Customer: CD-ROM?, I don't seem to have a CD-ROM.

Tech: On the front of the computer case you should see a few door looking objects, one of which that is long, it will have a button on it. Do you see anything?

Customer: "We'll I see smaller one with a button."

Tech: OK, no look for the longer one, it will have a biutton too.

Customer: "Huumm, Thank you for being patient with me as I am new to this computer thing, he he."

Tech: Not a problem at all, let me know what you see.

Customer: We'll like I said before there is a small door looking thing that has a button on it, a power button, then I have my cup holder, but thats it.

Tech: Hummm, cup holder sir?

Customer: OH my, thats the CD-ROM huh? I broke the door last week and when I called Tech Support they refered me to the computer people. I must have forgot to call, and got used to using it as as my cup holder, seems to work just fine.

Tech: Yes, this is where you will need to put the CD in and the CD should bring up the screens so that you may sign up for an account. I sugest you get that fixed and give our CD a try.

Customer: OK, sorry to bug you.

Tech: Sir, before I let you go lets try and remove the cup and see if you can push the button to get the door to go in.

Customer: OK, S@!T, I just spilled my drink all over me.

Tech: Are you alright sir?

Customer: We'll now that I now own brown spotted pants and carpet.

Tech: Seems that your CD-ROM works. When was the last time you turned off your computer?

Customer: OK I'll do it. So it worked all along. and now im wet. Thank you.....

I had a customer call complaining about their screen "jumping" at random. They then informed that this same thing had happened 2 weeks prior so they had removed the base stand from the monitor. It appeared to have helped. Unfortunately the same thing is happening again so they took different measure. When I inquired as to what they have done now, the reply was "We took a big 'ol brick and set it on top of the screen. But, it is still jumping"

The conversation below shows Tech support pple are not truly 'gods' and the laugh can come from the other side of the line....

Me: Hi, I can't send out emails but I can receive them..

Several minutes later....after the tech guy checked that there is nothing wrong with the computer settings etc...

Tech guy: I will reset your email password but I can't do that until you send an email to verify yourself.

Me: Can I call or something?

Tech guy: No, you can only email....

Me:.....huh???!!!But I thought my problem is I can't send emails!!!!????

I work for a big PC manufacturer which sells mainly to the home market, so we have a lot of first-time users...we run a contest for the biggest idiot of the week who calls in, as an unofficial thing amongst the techs... here's a few samples:

Me: "good afternoon, tech support, how can I help?"

Customer: " Hi, I'm getting Fatal exceptions, illegal operations and the system keeps hanging..what can I do?"

Me: "restore the system - it's the best option to get the OS back on track"

Cust:"won't I lose all my data?"

me:"yes - you'll need to backup first."

Cust: "but it'll only boot to safe mode, so I can't se my cd-rw."

Me:"well, you'll just have to backup what you can to floppy disks and lose the rest, sir"

cust:"but I spent £2000 on the entire MCSE course from Microsoft as a download...I can't lose it!"

Me:"Didn't you make any backups using your cd-rw?"

Cust:"no"

At this point I put the customer on mute and laughed...he won't be passing that exam. :-)

Worked for a large tech support company and one day a I received a call from someone wanting their computer fixed. AS I began to help them, I had asked them to "click on Start".

I hear nothing.

"Sir?" I replied.

"Yes, m'am?"

"Did you click on Start?"

"Yes m'am I did".

Okay I thought. "Now I need for you to click on Settings".

I again, hear nothing.

"Sir?"

"Yes m'am?"

"Do you see the Setting?"

"No m'am"

Think, tech support, think.

"Okay, what do you see?"

"A black screen."

"Huh?"

"A Black screen."

"Did you click on Start?"

"Why yes m'am I did! And then the computer shut off! What do you want me to do?!?!?!"

"Hit the Start button again sir, and let it reboot. Tell me when we see the desktop"

"The what?"

Oh dear....years of tech support. I'm bald now and a heavy smoker. And I'm only 23.....

I have a client frommy computer service business for the past four years. A few weeks ago I was there because some antiquated software was not y2k compliant. Since the software is the only program they need on this computer and it was not available as it was custom made years ago, I back dated the computer. There not concerned about dates just the data. Well after I got it all setup and printing I left as it would have taken 2 hours to print all the documents. A little while later the client calls me and said it stopped printing and the printer is saying "Out of paper". I told him put more paper in the printer. Now this guy is computer literate and he realized his mistake, it gave us both a great laugh.

me: Thank you for calling compaq tech support how can I help you.....

Loser: Hi I was wondering if you could tell me how I save a picture off of the internet to my desktop.

me: Well all you have to do is "right" click on the picture and choose save as and then choose desktop when it prompts for the place to save it.

Loser: Alright that seems easy enough. Let me try it.....

2 mins later the user says "Well son this aint working, iv'e been writting click on the picture for a while now and that box never showed up yet"

me: At this point I reach for the mute and laugh my ass off for about 2 mins.

Loser: Are you still there son?

me: Yes sir....it must have been a ID 10 T error that caused it not to work.

Thought that you guys would enjoy that one.

Some users in our office have remote access machines which allows them to PCAnywhere their workstations at their office. One complained that he could not hear the morning conference call on the Intranet. That it because he was remoting his machine and the speakers would on his workstation at work, not at home.

I sure everyone in his office heard it loud and clear since he kept turning up the volume because he could not hear it. He was told he could do all of his workstation needs from home with his remote laptop. (Well, almost)...

A client who is a network administrator called to say that two of his users are using the same user identity (a user id file and its password), and both users are using the same database file. However one of the users wants to hide some information in the file from the other user.

Fortunately for me I was talking with the administrator instead of the users, so I felt comfortable injecting some humor.

I said, "You could record the pattern of each user's iris (on their eyeball), and install iris readers on all the monitors they use. Then when someone logs in with that id, have the iris readers determine which user it is. Then have the database programmed to selectively hide information based on which iris pattern is detected.

Or, you could issue them separate user id files, and use normal user-level security."

I work for a major computer company, and recently I.S. sent out yet another Y2K patch intended for users of a certain model computer. (Never mind it's after Y2K and there weren't any reported problems....)Installing this particular patch involves loading the attached file to the Windows directory, editing several lines in the Registry and going to a DOS prompt to run some system diagnostics and then reporting the results back to I.S. Not the sort of thing that should be a DIY project....

Anyway, after fielding several calls about what the Registry and DOS prompt was, I had one of the other secretaries come over.

"Tianna, how do I open my computer?"

"Huh?" I looked at her.

"This thing they sent out says to start by opening my computer. How do I get it open?"

"You just click on this little thing up here," I said, locating my desktop under several open windows and pointing to "My Computer."

"Oh," she said. "Is that what they meant? I thought we were supposed to take the computer apart."

I'm very glad she asked first.....

This is a true story.

When I was working as technical support for a company in the downtown core, I received a call from a user complaining that her mouse was not longer working properly. I asked her to clean it by removing the ball and cleaning out any excessive dust. This didn't resolve the problem, so I figured the mouse was toast and decided to make a house call with a replacement.

On arrival to the site, I discovered the mousepad was upside down and that was the reason why the mouse didn't work properly in the first place. Looking red in the face, the lady quickly left for the day.

My company is trying to get all of our customer to place their own orders over computer systems. We've trained a lot of sales reps in installing the software. There are definitely a few digitheads-in-training, a lot of people who can follow directions, and a few people who really shouldn't go near anything electronic more complicated than a toaster. The ones who cause the most problems, though, are the digitheads-in-training. The others call us when they're stuck. The DITs get creative.

I got a call from a rep the other day. He had gone to a customer site with a CD to install the software. The customer had an older computer (many of our customers do) that did not have a CD-ROM. In fact, it was running Windows 3.1. Not to worry. He took the removable CD-ROM from his laptop, plugged it into the cable that allows him to connect his removable floppy drive to the parallel port, and plugged that into the customer's parallel port. He could not, however, get the computer to recognize the CD-ROM drive. Did he have the right port?

AARRGGHH!

1. The CD-ROM won't work hooked up to the parallel port of the computer it is designed to work with. It has to be installed in the peripheral slot.

2. Even if it would work on his laptop, it's proprietary hardware that probably wouldn't even work on that manufacturer's other model laptops or desktops. (Our previous vendor had floppy drives that were swappable between models, but the CD-ROM drives were not, go figure.)

3. Even if it used a standard protocol, Windows 3.1 wasn't plug-and-play and the customer's computer DEFINITELY did not have the device drivers to access a CD-ROM drive.

I can't believe he thought that would work.

I recieved a call from a customer desperatly trying to get him game controller to work properly. He said that he had contacted Gateway, and they had found that his PCI Controller for IRQ Steering was not functioning properly, so they naturally, they refered him to the tech support for his Racing Wheel, thinking it was the cause of the problem. Ouch. That Hurts.