Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

When our agency was first moving to computers and putting one on everyone's desk, we had to get a handle on inventory.

The previous manager had not kept very good track of the equipment so we had to send out forms to the users for them to fill out and return to us. They asked the basic questions, like what software is installed, the brand, and so on. Since we were switching from monochrome monitors to color at the time we also asked them to indicate if their monitors were color ones. The real kicker was that one of our users answered the question with "beige."

A friend of mine had a fax/modem board installed on his computer. But he was unlucky, and that board stopped working (the board could not dial). So, he took it to a tech support shop, and the techie, after a diagnosis of the board, said:

Yes, the board is not working correctly. But only the modem part. The fax part is still working correctly.

Yeah, right. Half board was dark burned :)

I worked tech support in college, at a major university in New Jersey, USA.

There was a lab downstairs from the tech support office, as at that time

not too many folks had their own machines.

One day, a confused-looking lady walks in. I'm at the front

desk.

Her: "Um, I'm having problems with a Mac downstairs."

Me: "OK. What seems to be the problem?"

Her: "I put my disk in, and it won't read it."

(Note: floppies going bad were common, and we had a disk-repair service

since so many folks who didn't have machines just carried their files

around on a floppy in their bookbag.)

Me: "Does it give you an error message?"

Her: "No."

Me: "Does it eject the disk, or can you eject the disk?"

Her: "No. The disk won't come out."

(Note #2: The usual cause of this is the metal door on the 3.5" floppy

bending outward just enough to catch in the slot on eject. Still not

an unusual problem; we used a letter opener to coax it out, and had one

ready.)

Me: "Okay, no problem, let me grab this (gets letter opener) and let's

go down and have a look."

We proceed downstairs. Her stuff is spread around this Mac SE/30, where

she's apaprently writing a paper. The Mac is making plaintive grinding

noises. I notice there appears to be dark confetti around the front of the

disk drive.

I scream. I couldn't help it.

She's folded a 5.25" floppy in quarters and stuffed it into the drive. I

look at her in sheer horror, only to be rewarded with a defensive look and

what has to be the best line I'd heard at tech support:

Her: "What? Why won't that work? It's magnetic, right? It can read it!"

Sigh.

Next shift (three days later) a gent comes in.

Him: "Hi, I'm having trouble, the computer won't read my disk."

Me (warily): "What machine are you using, and what kind of disk?"

Him: "I'm using the 286 in the lab, and it's a 5.25" high-density."

Me (with relief)" "OK. What does it tell you?"

Him: "Nothing; just makes noises then says it can't read the disk.

We go downstairs. I look at the machine, and then look at him.

Me: "How are you putting the disk in?"

Him: "I know I'm doing that right! I'm using the thumbgrip!"

...see, for those that don't remember 5.25" disks, the disk is visible

in an oval at one edge where the casing is cut away. Thumb grip.

Sigh again. I had to explain to him that no, his data wasn't

recoverable, especially since he'd apparently rubbed the grip vigorously a couple

of times so as to get good purchase on the disk.

(moan. hunt down large alcoholic sedative.)

I work for a national help desk and I work with realators,

Nuf said.

I has a lady call in and she keeps getting this error every

time she tries to call her database at work, something like

error opening com link tcp/ip.

Tech: what ISP do you have?

Caller: AOL

T: Great, what version?

C: All of them.

T: Lets check that, we looked and found that she has v3.0,

4.0, and 5.0 I found out now that every time the user

tries to dial her office AOL tries to pull up a web page.

Can I search for a file on your system?

C: sure, what one.

T: lets do a search for winsock.dll

C: I have 13 of them.

T: excuse me? did you say 13? how big are they?

C: lets see, 2kb, 42kb, 21kb, 22kb, 125kb, 12kb....

T: You need to call a tech in the office to have them remove

AOL from your system. you should only have one of these.

C: thats fine i dont like them anyway, besides i have

another ISP already.

Sometimes I wonder how AOL stays in business at all.

This goes on the same record wall in the office:

900 days since the last scandisk

12,000 temporary internet files

300+MB in the temp folder

and last but not least,

gets 4 GPFs in a row on reboot "Explorer has GPFed user.exe"

I worked for several years in user support for my college's campus computer labs. One day, a user came in reporting a problem downloading some software to her dorm PC. She had the directions in hand, and patiently explained that she had followed all the steps precisely.

She started the download, was told it was proceeding normally, and then left for a while. When she returned, she could not find the downloaded file, despite searching for the precise filename. She actually surprised me by being very computer-competent. Followed all the steps, couldn't find the file, so I figured it had stalled out or something midway through.

I was about to suggest she simply try it again, when she said,

"Do I need to leave the computer on when I'm downloading?"

My reply: "Mrrrrphggk. Er, ah, yeah, you probably should, uh, leave the computer on to download. I bet that's the problem."

Good thing I had her printout of the instructions covering my mouth, so she couldn't see me suppressing my laughter.

I work for a Cable company that also provides internet access, and handle the bulk of the technical support calls for our end users... Admittedly, this story is not about a tech call that I took, but rather, what was overheard directly from a co-worker that doesn't really know what he's doing... hence the title.

Just for some background information, I suspect that he may be a compulsive liar, or perhaps just delusional. Here's a couple of the whoppers he's told me:

1. Sun Mircosystems is moving their entire operation to Northern California because "They're tired of Silicon Valley."

2. He is a member of "The Junior SWAT Team" of the local Police Department.

3. He has two bachelors' degrees from the local junior college. One in "Criminal Justice", and another in Computer Science. The trouble with this is that a Junior college does not give Bachelors' degrees.

---

Here's how the call went...

Customer: Hi, I'm trying to send an e-mail with an attachment and it won't send.

Rep: Well, I know that you can't send some attachments if they're really big... I don't know what the limit is, hold on a sec.

(at this point he asks me for help, and I inform him that the cap is 10MB total per e-mail)

Rep: Ok, sir, it looks like you can't send anything larger than 10 megabytes.

Customer: Yes, I know the limit is 10MB, the attachment is well under that.

Rep: Hmmm, well, then what you're going to have to do is "Download the e-mail to a zip-drive and then send it"

Customer: OK, I'm not following you. What do you want me to do with it after it's on a zip disk?

Rep: You will need to send it in the mail, since it won't go through e-mail.

Customer: That's strange... I guess that's what I'll have to do, thanks.

-Call Ends-

After the call, my coworkers asks me if what he told the customer was correct. I inform him that putting the file on a zip disk and sending it through the mail isn't really going to help the customers' e-mail problem, and he should passed the call along to someone that might know what they're doing.

He the tells me, "Yeah, but they need to use that Zip Drive program... the one that shrinks the files!"

How this guy can even begin to claim that he has a bachelors' degree in Computer Science is way _beyond_ me.

I picked up the phone and answered...

Thank you for calling Technical Support this is Jeff, can I help you?

I can't get online, when I dial into the internet all I hear is "Computer talk....it never stops!"

I took the eu through some settings and they all appeared to be fine, then I asked the eu to have his computer dial a different number, he said that his computer doesn't dial the number but HE DOES ON HIS PHONE!!!!

I told the eu that his computer must make the call, not him dialing on the phone...

I had this friend who came to me asking if he could borrow

my zip drive. I told him that I did not own one and was

curious as to why he needed one (this guy was not the type

who looked like he used devices like that). He said he was

on the internet and he downloaded a program that was a zip

file and that he needed a zip drive to open it. After I got

off the floor from laughing I explained to the nut that the

zip drive and zip files have absolutely no relation. Sheesh,

some people crack me up.

Several years ago, we were upgrading our company's network from the standard Win 95 network (NETBUI) to the Lantastic 6.0 because it was "so much better" than Micro-squash.

After installation, we had nothing but problems for 2 days while we let important print jobs stackup. The network would work for 5 minutes after the tech was there and then shut down.

One of my co-workers solved the problem by purchasing a 50' printer cable which we strung from the printer room into the lab and when we wanted to print we just hooked our computers directly to the printer.

The graphic artist (and joker) made up a sign showing two tin cans with a string between them. He labled the sign "Can-tastic 6.0" and we attached it to the printer cable.

Years later, after we toss Lantastic, we still refer to our network as "Can-tastic"

This story took place in the call center i werk in @ the present . A customer had called in and spoke to a tech and had gotten very agitated and cursed out the tech (user your imagination) and then the customer hung up ...The tech was so upset/POED he called the customer back ,but no one answered except the customer answering machine picked up so the tech procedded to identify himself and be very profesional and curtius. He the told the customer "that his connectivity issue could be resolved by taking his cable modem and shoving it up his mothers xxx" SO of course the customer turned him in and he was fired , but what was funny is the Vice Presdient of the ISP played this @ the last Company meeting and he asked us to guess his first emotion he felt when he heard the tape ...can you guess what he felt...........(ENVY)

I werk in a NHD for Broadband net connection . My name is Scott, I recieved a call from a customer bout 630 am some friday morning . He seemed coherent tell the first question out of his mouth was "WHY ARE YOU TRING TO HACK MY PC" I said excuse me . I nor your ISP is tring to hack your PC. He said he was runnig NORTON firewall and it told him the someone was tring to access his 386 Kernal and he w.ant to know why i was hacking his computer . I explained in detail we would not hack a custom because we want to keep all our customers. I took this man @ face value maybe someone was hacking him buty it was not the ISP by no means . Then the customer opend his mouth and said "I call the FBI 3 hrs before they got hacked" i told the customer that that is a good way to become the prime suspect. At this point i thought the man to be a deranged lunatic who did not know what he was talking bout . Mabey he thought he was sane but i have serious issues with his mental capasity....

Thx for reading i will post another very soon seeing as i get alot of crazys here NHD jeff

A long time ago at the time of dos a spezial software which I had to support, had a "integrated" backup and restore function which was nothing else than a shell for the dos backup and restore command. Then a female customer called me and she said, that she made a restore and then she can't see the data of the last year anymore. I asked her at which time the last backup was performed and she said "last year".

I asked her for the reason for the restore, and she replied no special reason just for safety reasons.

I answered a restore can only contain the data from the time of the backup an she began to cry and said what kind of fucking software it is and why now warning before the restore function was executed appears....

Best regards

Uwe

This is a story from the other side of the fence.

Many years ago I was the IT manager at a small oil company, and we were in the process of converting to a new accounting system sold to us by Art*** And***** (a large accounting and consulting company). We were the first users of this system, so I expecting problems, but what we got was dramatically worse than my fears. Many programs had never even been tested, as evidenced by spelling errors in variable names.

As time went on, my patience dwindled. Finally, after fixing more than 30 bugs one morning, I snapped.

I called the local Art*** And***** office, and asked for the support person assigned to us.

He answered the phone with, "B*** H******, can I help you?"

I let loose with an unprintable stream of invective which continued for several minutes.

When he finally got a word in edgewise, what he said was, "So solly, you hef whrong nomber." This in an improbable Chinese accent. Then he hung up on me.

I stared at the phone, astonished, for a few seconds, then started laughing. Even today, 20 years later, it makes me smile. It's the best tech support I've ever gotten.

I use to work for a electronics store that had instore upgrading and repairs.

One day a couple comes in and puts a CPU on the counter demanding I fix the computer. I put the CPU on the tech bench and make all the connections. Turn on the conputer. Nothing happens. The fans are the only thing running.

I ask, " I think your motherboard is not getting any power."

The guy said, "Yes, I know that. I want you to replace it."

I said, "Ok, what happened when you turned on the power to use the computer."

The idiot stated, "I'm an electrician. When the computer didn't do the usual thing, I hooked up my OHM meter. I probed the motherboard, and I got some readings, then nothing."

I tried to not to laugh. For those who don't know what an OHM meter is, the general IDEA is to send a current though the probes in order to get a power reading. The moron decided to put too much power through the probes and shorted the system, proccessor and all.

I said," I can replace it, but the repair is not covered by the warranty."

All heck broke loose. The guy went into a rage and demanded the manger. I get the Store Manager and the SM asks me the problem. I explain the whole story.

The manager bursts into laughing. And tells the customer that he caused the problem and that abuse of the equipment is not allowed.

I never heard from that customer again. (Thankfully)

A couple of years ago I did home user tech support for

Dell. I never got any really bad calls like the ones I've

read here, but one stood out.

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

Cust: Well, I've got this brand new system. Got everything

out of the box and hooked up.

Me: Uh-huh

Cust: So...what do I do now?

Me: (stunned silence)...well...how about we turn it on?

Cust: Oh! Yeah, that sounds like a good idea!

Fortunately, that turned out to be a short call.

You tend to start these stories like a letter to Penthouse, "I never though it would happen to me..."

I was working for a publishing firm and was good friends with the President's assistant. Fortunately, she had a good sense of humor, I couldn't have enjoyed this nearly as much.

Assistant: (eating lunch) Chris, look at my monitor. It keeps jumping.

I stop by and see that her monitor is clear and sharp, no movement.

Me: What do you mean jumping?

Assistant: Can't you see that? The flickering, the moving lines? (followed by a handful of chips).

A moment of pause

Me: (smirk) My dear, please stop chewing.

Assistant: Oh wow! That did it. OH MY GOD, don't ever tell anyone about this!

Me: Of course not.

I had a guy on the phone the other day

cutomer: I am having a problem with my email

me: okay sir could you open up you email program

cutomer: whats that?

me: outlook express

customer: whats that?

me: what are you doing when you try to send email?

customer: I write it on a peice of paper and put it in the printer and turn it on.

What I didn't metion was that this guy was a 90 yr old man who got the computer from his birthday and never had one before

A customer calls up full of rage and fury yelling and screaming that our software is broken and won't allow him to print anything. I calm him down and start checking to see that all the printer driver and spooling stuff is setup correctly. After going through everything I still can't figure out why nothing will print and he is getting mad. Finally, I ask if his parallel printer cable is connected between the printer and the computer. He checks, says "sorry" and hangs up the phone.

I work for a company that does OS development. (Not Microsoft). This gas company had purchased our OS to run their buisness. The owner calls up yelling that our OS has wiped out all his system and data on his IBM Mod80. Confused, I ended up having him resinstall his system, because there wasn't enough left to even boot. A few days later he calls up with the same complaint. He tells me he also has a Mod70 and thinking that the Mod80 might have a bad drive I suggest he load the OS on the Mod70 and get IBM to repair the Mod80. A few weeks later he calls up with the same problem. As long as the OS was on the Mod70 everything was fine. But once he got the Mod80 back he reloaded the OS on the Mod80 and all his data was wiped out again.

Totally confused at this point I ask is there anything around or next to the Mod80. To which he say, nothing at all except for the zillion megawatt radio transmiter used to communicate with the gas trucks. The Mod70 is a desktop computer, while the Mod80 was a floor standing tower. As long as the system was on his desktop it was far enough away from the transmiter, but the Mod80 was right next to it. All that nice RF from the transmitter kept wiping his hard disk clean. I asked him to move the Mod80 to the other side of his desk and everything worked fine after that.

Not a really dramatic tale, but a response tech support staff might want to use.

Caller: I can't get into your web site.

Me: OK, what's happening?

Caller: Well, I can't get in.

Me: OK, that could mean you're getting a "404 file not found" error when you type the URL, or a gorilla came into the office and smashed your computer. Could you be more specific?

When I was the webmaster for a government agency, I got a lot of interesting calls. One day a guy called and asked, "Your site mentions a list of pre-approved contractors; can I get a copy of that list?"

I replied, "Well sure, if you go to the page, right where it says '1998 list of approved contractors,' that'll be highlighted and underlined. You can click on it, and it will take you right to the list."

He called back an hour later. "Yeah, I found where it says that, but it's not highlighted on my copy."

I was surprised to hear this, and opened it on my machine… yes, there's a link there. However, I can hear him shuffling papers. So I asked, "Are you looking at a hard copy?"

Yes, he was. I had to explain that I meant for him to go back to the web site, ON THE COMPUTER, and click on the link. How he expected to "click" on the link on his print-out, or how a piece of paper would magically give him the list he wanted, I'll never know.

Dear Tech Tales:

While studying for my A+ Certification at a local computer repair company, our class instructor insisted on letting us work on actual customer PCs. This was of course a terrific exercise, but is not without it's consequences...

We were gifted one day with a very run-down looking Compaq Presario. It looked as though it had been beaten with an ugly stick. Or, more precisely, beaten with the entire ugly tree. Covered in grime, dirt, dust, and discoloration, it was truly a nightmarish piece of hardware to behold.

Studying the service-request forms revealed that it had been in storage for many months, in a rental storage unit. Completely left to the devices of the elements... And mice.

Upon opening the unit, we discovered more dust and dirt than is usually allowed in an Indiana Jones Film. And, all over the circuit-boards, all over the drives and cables, all over the entire innards... Was loads and loads of mouse poop. Yes. About a hundred little Stink Pellets eagerly awaiting our attention.

The customer's comment: "I dunno what's wrong. It just won't boot up."

Right.

So, we cleaned it. Nothing is as funny as watching three technicians cover their noses with masks and their hands with gloves, tenuously reaching into a computer with canned air and blasting out Poo Pellets.

I guess it just goes to show: Compaq computers are pretty crappy.

This happend to a friend of mine...whitch no longer works at that company!

Support: hello xxx how may I help you?

Costumer: My PC is broken...

Support: It's broken? What is wrong with it?

Costumer: It won't start...

Support: Do you get any picture at all on the computer?

Costumer: no, the screen is black!

Support: Is there any lights on the monitor og PC?

Costumer: no, I don't think so...

Support: Is the powercord and monitorcord connected?

Costumer: haha, yes of course.

Support: OK, well can you check...just in case. Maby it fell out or something...

Costumer: OK, I'll check!

Costumer: I can't see anything behind the computer. It's too dark.

Support: Well, do you have a lamp or something?

Costumer: Yes, but the electrisity is out...It won't be back before tomorrow.

Support: OK...This is what you need to do: Put the PC in it's original wrapping, take it down to where you bought it, and tell the clerk that you can't have a PC...because you're too STUPID!!!!

-click-

...short after he was fired...

me:xxx how may I help you?

him: I need to order a part...

me: OK, what part do you need?

him: You see, my coffeecup holder is broken.

me: your coffeecup holder?? We don't have coffeecup holders, we only carrie computerparts.

him: yeah, but it is a computerpart. It's built in the PC.

me: well....

him: It's on front of the harddisk. I think the motor is broken. It won't come out.

me: Are you talking about the door on the PC whitch opens when you push the button next to it?

him: yeah!

me: THAT is the CD-Rom...!!!

I do tech support for a few different ISPs and received one of my more amusing calls yesterday from an OE user:

Me: Thank you for calling _______, how can I help you?

Her: I can't read all my messages!

Me: What happens when you try?

Her: Well they're there, but I can't scroll down to see them all, The scroll bar is gone!

Me: There's none there at all?

Her: Yes!

Me: That means that all of the messages you have are already visible and the scrollbar is unnecessary.

Her: But There's only three messages there!

Me: could you please move your mouse down to the line at the bottom of the window until it turns into a two-way verticle arrow?

Her: Okay

Me: Okay, now hold down your mouse button and drag that line up until it covers one of your messages.

Her: Oh! There it is!

Caller: I have a trackball that doesn't work so well. So I have a temp regular mouse, but I would like to use the trackball.

Tech: Ok, Plug in the trackball and let me remote in to see what its doing.

Caller: ok it in.

Tech: yeah it is set up ok but going kinda of sluggish

Tech: Can you plug the regular mouse back in. (working fine)

Tech: Caller can you find another trackball to see if it is acutally the trackball.

Caller: yeah I have a brand new in the box right here!

The district wide tecnology director recieved his new Acer laptop. He was very excited! He played, he worked, he took it home. That's when it all began. He went to get on his spankin new laptop, turned it on, and it just beeped 4 times at him. He tried again, again beeps and nothing else. Well he became frustrated so he got on his home computer went to Acer online help and got a toll free number which to call for help. He waited and waited of course. Finally he was talking to someone and tried telling him "my laptop won't start up, it's new, and when I try to turn it on it beeps and shuts down." So the tech support asks well do you have it plugged in. "Of course I have it plugged in!" He made sure to check though because he was uncertin. Well do you have a charging light on your power adapter the support man asked. The tech director picks up the power cord says "no"...he starts to follow the cord along the floor and then says to the tech support "I guess you have to plug it into the wall for it to work, hu!" Yeah and we call on the "Experienced Technology Director" to help us with our probelms.

This is on a large international system

with hundreds of TSO users.

caller: How come my job didn't run ?

me: what is the job name.

caller: you know, it's the job I run every day

me: No I don't know, there are over 40,000 applcations

in the scheduler. can you tell me the name of the one you run?

Caller: I don't know, it's the one I login and start everyday. Don't you know it?

me: No can you tell me what system you login to.

caller: I don't know, how would I tell that? Is there someone else that would know my job name?

me: hold on I'll send you to my manager.

Sometimes I get conned into working on friends PCs. I have

a co-worker that needs to be reminded and retaught everytime

she does something on the PC. I don't care if she does it

100 times the next day you have to show her how to do it

again. Total space cadet if you get my drift.

Well somehow she managed to get a PC given to her a dinosaur

386 no CD, no modem just your basic word processor and maybe

a few games. It had a real funky Start Menu and I had a copy

of Win 3.11 and told her I would come over and take a look

at it and install Windows so that it would be easier for

her to manuver in.

About 3 weeks later I'm sitting home surfing the NET and get

a phone call and its the co-worker from hell. So she tells me

that her girlfriend got a free 100 Hour CD for AOL and they

can't get it to load so I assumed(dumb me) that they were at

her girlfriends and I'm asking questions about type of PC

operating system and can you get to a DOS prompt to load it

manually. I asked her what letter was assigned to the CD ROM

and she didn't know I said why don't you put your girlfriend

on the since its her computer let me talk to her.

There was a long pause of silence and she said said its not

hers its mine...WHAT I practically screamed then I asked

where'd you put the CD you don't have a CD ROM so where'd

you put the $#@*& CD...in a mousey voice she said you know

the one where I put those big disks...you mean the 5 1/4

Drive????? How the hell did you get it in there? Well at

first it didn't want to go but it did by this time I'm

starting to laugh I asked her what she was trying to do

anyway and she said we thought we'd be able to get on the

NET I'm just laughing now and I said you can't you need a

modem first and all she could say was OH. I'm still just

rolling and told her I had to go and then she piped up and

said "How do I get the CD out of the Drive" Now I'm really

laughing and I said just before I hung up on her GUESS

WHAT THE 100 FREE HOURS ARE FOR??????? I think about it

every now and then still laugh.

An old lady called me wanting to know about firewalls, well , me being cutious, I had to put her on old a wonder, why is an 80 year old woman asking me about a firewall. I want back to the call and asked, what can I help you with. She said. "i want to know about Pc's and firewalls" I said "what about them". She said "I live in a mobile home, and my pc is about 5 feet away from my PC, do I have anything to worry about?" I couldn't help but laugh!. I told her that Firewalls are for network protection and not about heat. She felt dumb, and thanked me.

Me and my buddy worked for a large OEM supplier of those computer that come in a cow box. My friend had the following call: A lady called up all upset, she had just purchased a 400 mhz PC and a printer. The lady started complaining saying that her brand new computer wasn't fast enough for her, he said why? Well it says Minimum requirements: a 486 computer and I have a 400. Nuff said, LOL.

I work for the second largest isp around, and we get some of the most ridiculous callers......Here are a few of my peeves, and a few funny calls...

USER:Can you see what's on my screen?

ME:*sigh*

ME:click the right mouse button.....

USER:where's that?

ME:(wanting to say) On the goddamed keyboard...

Once you tell them to right-click once, everything goes down hill from there.....Afterwords, every time you tell them to click or double-click, they say "With the right button?"

ME:Press enter.....

USER:On the keyboard?

ME:(wanting to say) no, on the mouse, idiot.....

And sometimes you have to stoop to their level:

ME: Drag the icon to the desktop and let go of the mouse button......

USER:The desktop?

ME:Just any blank part of the screen

USER:None of it's blank --there's clouds all over it....

ME:Just drop it anywhere where there aren't any icons......

USER:Icons?

ME:Just drop the floating picture thing that youre holdin' with the mouse onto to the clouds where there arent any of those picture things with words under 'em.....

USER:Oh, ok....

USER:There's a sheep running rampant on my computer!!!! (It said sheep in the task list, she kept trying to catch it with her mouse.....end tasked it, and soon found sheep.exe)

ME:Click on the start button.....

USER:the start button?

USER:Oh...there it is...with the left or right button?

ME:Go ahead and shut down the computer completely, we'll wait the count of ten, and turn it back on again......

USER:(two minutes of dead silence later) Do you want me to turn it back on yet?

(gotten that one numerous times)

Probably my biggest peeve is when I carefully and meticulously describe the each step of the process of ctrl-alt-deleting, end tasking everything except Explorer and Systray, and every f**king time, they restart the computer....

Oh, and I can't forget......Those people who read everything on the page from the top down...

--Nate

Me: Hello, how may I help you?

End User: This stinkin' brand new computer y'all jist sold me ain't no !#$$ good!

Me: I'm sorry sir, I didn't get your name, so I don't know which computer you are speaking of.

E.U.: I know y'all're sorry. Thet's why I'm-a-callin'!

Me: Ok, sir, please tell me what is wrong.

E. U.: The @##$$% A drive on this thang don't work no better'n the one we had afore!

Me: (Dawning light, I think) Well, sir, you are in luck. A brand new computer is always covered by warranty.

Please just bring it back and I'll see how quickly I can get you going, again.

It was at this stage that End User and I had a very stimulating conversation about my parentage, my boss's parentage, the salesman's parentage and how truly bad we all were.

He also informed me that his "brand new" secretary had been working for days figuring out the contents of all the disks her predecessor had stored critical data on.

She would read the contents of the disks, write out a label and stick it on. Then, the boss would be unable to read it in the a: drive.

(Back to phone conversation)

Me: Ok, sir, when you bring me the computer, please bring me one of more of the disks you are having trouble with, too.

E. U.: Whut for? It's this @$#%@#^$@^# computer whut ain't no good!

Me: I just like to eliminate all the possibilities, sir.

Now, finally off the phone, listening to the boss and the other techs laughing like idiots, I thought I sould have time to regain my composure before E. U. arrived.

I was very wrong. He managed to unhook the computer, load it into his pickup and drive the seven plus miles from his shop to ours in less than ten minutes!

I took the computer and began hooking it up while he returned to the truck to get the disks.

He returned with the disks in a box. There were at least a hundred of them. They were all neatly labeled, but when I pulled the first disk out of the box,

I did a double-take. I looked at more of them and burst out laughing. I had to sit down, I was laughing so hard I couldn't stand up.Every disk in the box had its label pasted right over the access door! As E. U. left the shop, he vowed to kill the new secretary.

The Internet company that I work for prides itself on having reliable connections. However, as with all technology, sometimes things do go wrong. We had our dial-in lines go down for three remote areas. Naturally, this was not a quiet evening in the tech support pit, as the following illustrates....

"Good evening, and thank you for calling Nonesuch Internet. My name is Z'Loth, thank you for holding, how can I help?"

"Yes, I'm having problems connecting to your service. Are you guys having problems?"

"Where are you dialing from?"

"Up around OutThere."

"Yes, we are currently experiencing technical difficulties with that number. We currently have a Telco technician on-site fixing the problem."

"Oh, good, so it's not my system. I've been trying to log on for the past 8 hours."

This has occurred several times due my tenure as Internet Technical support....

"Good afternoon, and thank you for calling Nonesuch Internet. My name is Z'Loth. How can I help you?"

(pause)

"Are you a real live human being?"

"Yes, ma'am, but I can go 'beep' if you like."

I do E-mail tech suport for a leading computer manufacturer. Here is the actual thread, without the names to protect the idiot.

Problem: Other/Don't Know

Problem Description: I set up my system scheduled task to turn on every Su at a certain time to do the specific tasks, and it didn't turn on yesterday 4/16. It turned on 1 week ago, but I manually turned it on that Su and it worked. I set the settings to wake my computer on if not on. I checked yesterday, and it didn't perform the tasks. It said next scheduled task is 4/23.( not even a SU) I don't understand. Is there a way to do this manually once a week?

*********

My Response

*********

The setting in the Scheduler for "Only when the computer is not in use" will not turn the computer on for you. It has to be turned on and booted into Windows. When you turn off the computer, Windows is not loaded into memory any longer and the computer has no way of knowing that there is a scheduled task until Windows is loaded again. I apologize for the inconvenience.

**********

Customer Response

**********

So, what's the purpose of the sheduled tasks and those settings if I have to keep the computer on? So I have to do it manually?

**********

My question is, where do these people come from, and why do they keep getting into my queue?

Thanks for calling _____ how may I help you?

Yes, this is Ms _____ I've been having problems with this cell phone from the first day I got it.

What seems to be the trouble Ms _____?

I can make outgoing calls just fine but no one seems to be able to get through when they call me. My mother has tried several times and she told me it keeps saying, "Please wait while we locate the customer", then it will transfer her to my voice mail.

Do you have the phone with you now?

Yes I do. It’s right here in my purse.

If you don't mind, I will try to call you to see what kind of message I get.

No I don't mind at all.

Great. Just make sure you phone is on.

What do you mean? I have to turn the phone on?

Ms _______ don't you keep your phone on throughout the day?

No! I turn it on to make calls and I immediately shut it off!

Ms ______ you can't receive incoming calls unless your cell phone is on.

You mean I have to leave my phone on all day?

Yes you do.

But if I did that it would kill the battery!

An eldery lady came to my store, I owned a 2000 sq ft. retail store in Canada, and ask to buy a cheap printer. Showing her a selection of printers she pick a used dot matrix printer.

She came back the next day asking for windows 3.1 drivers, she didn't have the original disks. So I put the driver on a 3.5" floppy and gave her proper instructions, trying to remember how to install a printer on 3.1. It's been a while since I had last worked on it. She calls back and say's the floppy was blank, I told her to bring it back and I would redo the disk. She said she could get the disk out of the drive. I ask her if the button was stuck in? No I got the lever up. HUH? It seems she had put it in a an old 5 1/4" drive. I asked how did she get it in there, She said it was a little tough so she used a hammer.

she asked me how should I get it out. My mind's a blank I said tweesers, She said she had already tried that. Well I ending up doing a service call and selling a used 5 1/4 floppy drive and install the print drivers for her..... Just when you thought you had seen it all.

And The other funniest call I received was from a younger lady in a panic, her computer said it had performed an illegal operation, I asked if her modem was pluging into the phone line. she said yes, I said "oh oh that means the police are already on their way" She told me to hang on while she closed the windows and doors. Seems she thought her computer, had a mind of it's own and was out tring to hack major systems. I tried to keep a straight face but broke down on the phone laughing at her. I even posted the event in my store givin her full credit of course.

My clients called her crash and she took it all in fun, she ended up to be a good client, that learned the hard way not to panic.

A guy in my grade 10 class heard a story that went around my friends that I was better-than-average at a computer keyboard.

The stories went along the lines of guys with some seriously sub-human porn on their computers mysteriously loosing it and he decided to make some stuff up to match.

Unfortunatley he chose to tell us that he broke into a bank and stole money with a 386 computer and no modem, we didn't believe him.

In an ongoing computer literacy test for him we took to turning off the turbo (on old computers you have a button to crank the MHz up 33 or whatever).

EVERY time he would yell at us to stop it and promptly hit the button below, the reset.

Some hacker.

I was selling some of my computer stuff at a church garage sale, and along comes this scruffy fella who wanted parts. He picked up one of the hard drives and asked:

"Is this as big as a 486?"

"Its a hard drive" I replied.

"So how big is that?"

I checked the label, and replied "1.2 gigabytes"

He stared at me quisically, then asked: "So is that as big as a 386 then?"

I briefly explained the difference between a x86 processor and a hard drive, in simple language.

Then he said "well I'm building a computer cause I just need something cheap and simple for home, and I dont know much about this stuff... umm.."

he pauses a moment...

"Is this as big as a 486?"

I took a breath, and said "This is not a 486. This is a *hard drive*. You save files and install programs on here. A 486 is a processor. Its liek the computer's engine".

"So is it a 486?"

"No. Its a hard drive."

"Well I dont care if its a real 486, is it as big as a 486?"

I obviously wasnt getting through to him. So I calmly said "Its not even remotely like a 486."

He thought about that for a minute, then put it back on the table and walked away.

I wonder what this computer he was building turned out like...

A friend I know told me this rather interesting (and sad) story.

A friend of his had called him and told him that there was some thing wrong with her cup holder that came with her PC.

My friend, who was astonished, said " what cup holder"? She said that it doesnt open any more and she is preaty upset about it.

So my friend, wondering what she is talking about goes over to her house. Turns out that she was using her CD-RW drive as a cup holder!

She took the computer back to the store she purchased it and they said they dont cover "cup holder" failures.

This story just shows how stupid some people can be, what a waste of a good CD-RW drive!

I work for a friend who owns a computer shop in a tiny town. We offer a support and through this we have meet some of the most dumbest people ever.

My colleuge had a phone call from one of our customers, saying that his machine was running really slow and bring up weird errors. Because he couldn't give much details over the phone, he had to go out. This cunstomer lived over

50 miles away. So out he went, at the cost of the customer, becuse he had not bought a system from us and he was to be charged for fixing someone elses machine. On arrival he sat infront of the computer and set about his work... and as a habit he always emptys the waste basket and what pops up, "Are you sure you want to delete these 50,032 items"! Apparently they hadn't emptied their waste basket in the 2 years that they had it. Needless to say, it started to work a little more normal.

Another customer who dropped their machine by, saying that he had got a great deal on a 17 GB HDD, and had stuck it in as a slave drive; but windows was not picking it up. So we opened it and to our surprise we discover that he had for some unknown reason stuck the spear floppy drive power connection onto the jumpers!

A customer bought a computer off us, and so we delivered and set it all up for he, made sure it was working etc. so when we were done, he started to ask about getting DVD installed. After telling him all the good things about have one, he decided that he was going to buy one, and

Guy: Could you guys fit for me?

Us: Sure, no problem, jus' drop the base unit by any time and we'll stick it in.

Guy: What bit is the base unit?

Us: Uhm... the bit you stick your disks into.

Guy: Oh, okay, well you can take that if you want, i dont have any disks so i dont thnk ill need it!

EH??

When I worked in the Computer Support Department at a small

Indiana University, I received this call.

ME: Hello Help Desk

CALLER: I can not get my computer to read this floppy

ME: Do you know if the floppy is Mac or PC formatted ?

CALLER: It is a Mac disk and I am using a Mac. It worked

before.

(After about five minutes of various troubleshooting

methods I gave up…)

ME: I will come down over there and look at it. Is that OK.

CALLER: Sure.

I walked about 1.5 miles to this person's office. I took

one look at the disk and found the problem. The problem

was that the person was trying to read a calculator.

It seems that a major computer supply company was giving

out calculators shaped like floppy disks. This person

stuck the calculator in the disk drive and was trying to

retrieve the information off of it. "It worked before!"

My first call of the day came from a field sales person. His problem, he said, was that he could not send/receive his email. I ran through the usual rule outs, dialer connection, correct password and profiles. Finally I asked him to shut down his laptop and try to re-connect. "Wait a minute", he said, "I have to pull off the road."

I work for a large law firm where the users can be very unhelpful, one day we had a call from a user saying they had finished with the notebook and it was to be picked up from reception. Knowing there was no way any of the receptionists are able to bring it down to our level, I nipped upstairs and said I was there to pick up the notebook. The not so bright receptionist picked up her writing pad and proceeded to hand it to me!!

I am network administrator/tech/all around computer schlep

for a small company. I am on 24 hour call in case the network

goes down or there are problems.

One night I get a call that one of our printers would only

print yellow. The print jobs were very important, and

production on the floor was stalled until these documents

printed correctly.

I had her change the ink cartridge thinking it had run out

of the other colours. Still yellow. Checked the settings

to make sure the font colour had not been changed. Reboot.

Reset the printer. As little as I liked it, I had to get

dressed and go in.

When I got there, she pointed me toward the defective printer,

and was puzzled because it was not a colour printer. It was

a Hewlett Packard laserjet, black and white.

She went to lunch, while I worked on it. I printed a test

document, and on the first try the text printed out black (not

that there was a possibility that it could be any other

colour). When she came back I showed her the page I printed

from the sheet feeder, then started to leave.

As I was pulling out, she ran and stopped me, waving a piece of

paper. Yellow paper. The tray was loaded with yellow paper.

This is what she meant by printing yellow.....

Needless to say I showed her how to change the paper in the

tray, then went home to sleep (with the phone unplugged!)

After a few weeks on a new job, I noticed that the Vice-Guru

in charge of Everything Technical was a 2 finger typist. After

getting on my nerves particularly heavy one day, as I sat in

his office and waited soooo patiently while he typed slower

than syrup in the middle of a Maine winter, I waited for my

chance. After he went home (about 3pm), I switched the key

caps F and G on his terminal.

The next day, he couldn't get logged in. He kept trying over

and over, with no luck. He called over First-Guru in charge

of Everything Technical, who immediately noticed the problem

(being a touch typist, and infinitely more intelligent to

boot). Seems that by sheer luck, one of those letters was in

his password!

Let me give a bit of background about me. I am a 19 year

old college student going through the Microcomputer

Support Specialist and CNET Administrator Program at

Clark College. I am nearing the end of my program,

and one of the requirements for graduation is to work at

the student helpdesk. Well this particular helpdesk is a

free helpdesk that supports the Vancouver WA, and Portland

OR metro area. We support anyone within the community that

calls us to the best of our ability. Harold, a particularly

persistent caller/pest called me the my first shift on my

first day of work what happened afterwards just got funnier

and funnier:

Harold: (this is the voicemail that prompted me to call)

"Uh yes I am calling because I need help finding a lawyers

web page and cannot get into the Internet. My number is:

So I called Harold back.

Andrea: "Hi Harold this is Andrea with the Clark College

student helpdesk. How may I help you?

Harold: "Hi Andrea, I just need to get to a lawyers web

page."

Andrea: "Okay try www.attorneysearch.com That's the best

resource that I know of."

Harold: "Well do you have any specific attorney in mind

Andrea?"

Andrea: "Harold, I'm not from this area and I know nothing

about the attorneys around here. Besides I am only supposed

to help you with computer issues, I don't provide legal

aide, sorry."

Harold: "I really need to get to an attorney quickly."

Andrea: "Well Harold check out that web page, that's all

that I can tell you to do.

Harold: "Okay bye thanks for your help."

Andrea: "Bye."

I logged the call, with the comment extremely weird call.

as I was typing into our customer database not 5 minutes

later the phone starts to ring. Guess who it is, my new

found customer Harold.

Andrea: "Clark College student helpdesk Andrea speaking.

May I help you?"

Harold: "Hi Andrea it's Harold again. I cannot get into my

ISP."

At this point I walked him through dialup connection

settings, everything that I could except DNS numbers and

mail setup.

Harold: "I still can't get in."

Andrea: "Harold you'll have to call your ISP."

Harold: "I've already called them and we did the same

things."

Andrea: "Well if you can try them again and get the DNS

numbers I can try and help you."

Harold: "Andrea do me a favor and go to this website (some

really long huge URL). What do you see?"

Andrea: "It says it's not found."

Harold: "I know it's there. I just went to it. Well try this

(another relaly long huge URL)"

This time it worked, and I was on the CIAs web page about

alien abductions.

Andrea: "I see a web page about alien abductions Harold."

This caller was getting really suspicious to me.

Harold: "Read it, ithas some very interesting information

about me and my people."

Andrea: "Your people?"

I'm starting to wonder whether I should just call the mental

ward now or let him explain.

Harold: "Yes, oh my ISP still does not work, I want you to

come to the house and fix it."

Andrea: "I can't. It's not my jurisdiction."

Harold: "I really need someone to fix it. I HAVE TO GET TO

A LAWYER! They [the CIA] abducted me from my space craft and

I have to sue them. What time are you off school? I'll come

out and pick you up."

Andrea: "I have to go home, and it is not legally okay

for me to go out and fix your computer. I suggest you

call CompUSA and use the dial-a-tech service.

I have to go Harold I've got class."

Harold: "okay bye, read that page and call me back."

Andrea: "Bye."

I was seriously traumatized by this call, but laugh about

it now. Harold called while I was writing this story down,

this time he has an apparent hard drive failure, but he

still wants one of our techs to go out to his house and

work on the computer. This time he asked if I would put up

and advertisement for a roomate for him. I almost feel like

forwarding him to mental health services when he calls our

helpdesk he needs help with more than the computer I think.

I build and support a CD-ROM database product for a Public Relations company. A while back I got a call from a user that went something like this:

User: I need to exchange the CD you sent me. It's the wrong size for my computer.

Me: Wrong size? I don't understand.

User: The hole is too small! It won't fit in my machine! You need to send me another CD with a larger hole!

Me: (I'm sure you can see this coming) Ma'am, are you using a laptop?

User: Yes, but....

Me: With a laptop, you have to snap the CD in.

I then managed to coax her into applying a little pressure to the disk, and lo and behold, it snapped into place.

I guess the hole in the disk was a wee bit smaller than the hole between this user's ears!

I had a custumer call me who was having a problem with his keyboard keys sticking. As he explained to me, "some of the keys on the keyboard are stuck! What do you suggest I do about it?" I told him immediatley to buy some compressed air and clean up his keyboard ( because he said that he kept was in a dusty area). He said he had tried that. I told him that some times if you just drop the keyboard lightly on the desk the keys would loosen themselves up. "Ok, I'll try that......thunk, thunk....Hey it worked.......but now my screen is all screwed up." I ask him what kind of keyboard he had......."I think it is an IBM Think Pad!.....Why?

i do some part time support whenever I get the time to do so.

one day a strange guy called in and said his pc has frozen up and he didn't want to shut it down or reboot because he had a huge download going on.. now since his soundcard didn't work he had bought a new one and wanted to install it "right away" (yeah that means NOW) so that he could listen to some music while downloading. Well somehow he had misunderstood the basic of plug'n'play and installed it while the computer was on.

Later, when I explained that he HAD to turn off his pc, which wasn't easy because this guy had downloaded for days and didn't want to loose his download (yeah no getright or any sort of those programs) so after 40min of talking i finally got him to turn off his pc and amazingly it worked when he turned it back on..

I still don't know what to think. The user was having trouble connecting to our service for the past two days, the operatinmg system was in Russian so she could not convey to me the exact message, it sounded like it might be trouble establishing network connection.

Me: Got to My Computer

User: Okay

Me: Go to Dial-up Networking

User: Okay

Me: Right click one time on (icon) and then click on properties

User: Okay. If I have any problems, I'll call you back

*click*

Me: *banging head on desk*

I work for an east coast company, that produces Income Tax Prep software, in Tech Support. This particular call happend on the the last day of tax season. We were expecting a flood of calls pertaining to our software and tax questions.(we are not tax prep professionals by any means.)

On the last day of the tax season, April 17, 2000, my first call of the day was from a preparer on the west coast. It was 5 am and she had been up all night doing returns. This was evident by the speed of her words, (coffee high).

She was experiencing a problem that was common to some users that really haven't taken the time to learn how to use our program.

After trying to get her to the right directory to remove some files and running disk cleanup to free up over 700 megs of hd space, she breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Thank You God for helping me"

My reply was, "My name is not God, it's Ken. Have a nice day." (click)

Many years ago, whilst playing one of the Kings Quest games on an ancient PC, the game always crashed at a certain point. Though there was an error message, it didn't help much:

ERROR: out of hunk

???

(Home telephone rings)

Me: Yep?

Mate Ben: It's Ben. I've forgotten my hotmail password! What do I do?

Me: No problem. When you registered, you must have specified a secret question so you can get your account back up.

Ben: How do I do that then...

Me: (explain explain explain) okay, so you've got your secret question up then?

Ben: Yeah.

Me: Good. Well type the answer in an you're away.

Ben: But I don't know the answer!

Me: Ah... well... er... what's the question say?

Ben: "What is my password."

And the rest, after the sharp sound of a cracking tooth, is silence.

Just happened today, about five minutes ago.

Me: Hi, this is StarChaser, can I have your problem number, please?

Him: My what?

Me: The six digit number they gave you (mute switch) ten seconds ago.

Him: I don't remember...

Me: (sigh) Ok, what's your name?

Him: Ima Doofus.

Me: Ok, hang on while I search for it. (hold, websurf, answer email on Deja for about 30 seconds. Our hold music is -really- bad. Punitive hold.) Ok, got it. You need to keep these numbers in case you have to refer to this call again. The number is (blahblahblah) (Worse, he had called in on this same problem FIVE MINUTES AGO)

Him: Oh, ok. My Outlook isn't working.

Me: What's wrong with it?

Him: I don't know.

Me: What's it doing?

Him: I don't know.

Me: (mute switch) I can tell. (/mute) You said Outlook is not working. I need to know HOW it's not working so I can tell you what the problem is.

Him: Oh, ok. When I put my passcode in the dialer, it says my password is wrong.

Me: So it's not Outlook, it's the dialin. The password is (company rep ID number).

Him: No it's not, it's my passcode! (Passcode being a PIN and a securID random number, that is used on the NEXT screen) And it worked yesterday! (The quote we ALL love to hear...)

Me: No, it didn't. (Checks account, unlocks password) I've reset your password. Your password is (rep ID).

Him: Ok, thanks.

(Five minutes later, he calls in AGAIN. We go through the 'What is your number?' "I don't know" again.)

Me: What's wrong now?

Him: The dialer won't take my passcode. And that last guy was an idiot, he didn't fix my problem...

Cursed-that's what my friends call me. I brake computers just by looking at them. Arcaid games eat my money and then blow up. Here are a few of my first clueless attempts at computer usage:

The computer teacher tells us to print our work. I get out a piece of paper and write without cursive.

My friend tells me to use the mouse. I look all over the library floor.

my friend tells me to use the internet. i type "net" and hit the "enter" button.

I use to think software was like clothes for the computer.

I get the message "Press any key to continue." I promptly ask my friend where the "any" key is.

I get my fingure stuck in the CD-Rom drive. I ask the teacher what to do and she presses the open button.

the internet message comes up asking for permission to make a "Cookie." I click yes and wonder what kind they're going to make.

Directions on my computer worksheet asked me what a cursor is. I replied "a person like Brandon whoever."

I am a student at Kingwood High School; I'm in ninth grade.

In eighth grade, I was in "Mrs. happytest's" accelerated language class. One day as I work on my essay, she calls me to her desk. She looks rather pale and I ask her, "What's wrong?"

She points to the computer monitor. There is a "This program has performed an illegal operation." notice.

She asks, "What do I do? Are they going to arrest me!?!"

I smile and say, "No. Just click close. It's fine."

She says, "Are you sure? I'm not going to jail? Really?"

I say, "No. Honest, just close it."

She closes and breathes a huge sigh of relief.

I walk back to my desk wondering why they even gave her a computer.

I work for a rather large ISP and one day a lady called to open an account and close it the same day. After she had cancelled the account she called tech support becuase she was having a problem with a (our name here) thing. I went through the normal process of determine whether or not certain software was on her computer. After finding out that she had none of our software on her computer i asked her to walk me throuh, exactly, everything that happens.

HER: whenever i click on anything on my computer a (our name here) thing opens up.

ME: what exactly opens up?

HER: a thing that says (our name here) and a cancellation number.

ME: where on the computer is it?

HER: On the top

ME: Where?

HER on the very top of the screen

It turns out that the lady had folded the piece of paper that she had written her cancellation confirmation number and our name on and taped it to the top of her monitor and every time she moved the mouse the movement caused the folded paper to open up...god i hope she doesn't have children, people that stupid shouldn't breed.

I take tech support calls for a large Family oriented ISP. Our tech support number is 1-888-xxx-xxxx and we recently found that the 1-800 equlivant of our number is a porn line. We often got complaints from members who would dial the wrong number and wind up listening to porn. I had one interaction that sticks out in my mind above all the rest.

After working for 10 minutes to help reslove this members problem she lets me know (as if I didn't already know)that if you dial 1-800 by accident you wind up at a porn line. She then went on to tell that she had waited on hold for 5 minutes listening to this porn line before she realized she was at the wrong number. She said she thought she was listening to our hold message! She thought rather than make people listen to music we would let them listen to something they might actually enjoy.

" The delete key is backspace right " ?

I have been in computer support for more than 10 years. This is one of my recent laughs. I received a phone call from one of my network clients complaining that no one could do anything on the network and that the server was beeping. Figuring I have a hardware failure I grab an extra system in case and run over to the office. After about two seconds of observation I realize that they have piled office supplies on the server keyboard and jammed all the keys down. Promptly removed the supplies and cleared the keystrokes from the console. Informed the office manager of the problem and billed them for one hour of tech time and travel. Total fix time 1 minute.

Same company a month later. Got a call that one of the computers was only displaying a pattern of boxes on the monitor. Turned the computer on and off same thing. Grabbed extra graphics card in case and headed over. When I arrived I turned on the system and confirmed what they described. Crawled under the desk to disconnect the computer to check it out and saw the monitor was unplugged. Plugged in monitor and magically fixed the computer. Billed for one hour and travel. Total fix time 5 minutes.

Customer: How can I tell at what speed I am connected to y'all?

Me: Oh ok, do you see the time. If you hover the mouse pointer above the two little green-flashing computers you should be able to see at what speed you are connected!

Customer: Hold on, you are going too fast, now you want me to look at the time, ok I am looking at it.

Me: Ok, do you see two little computers?

Customer: Now wait a minute, which time you want me to look at! I have one in the living room and one in the kitchen, and ......

Me: No , Sir please...just look at the screen of your PC.

Do you see the screen?

Customer: Yes.

Me: It has four corners, right?

Customer: wait let me look.

Me: Oh, wait I can see you, I can see you, you are

connected at 50k and that is a very good speed Sir.

Customer: Thank you so much for you help, bye.

Not only are the customers a few bricks short of a boatload, but even some of the technicians. I do tech support for a [H]uge [P]rinter company. I happened to overhear(OK, snooping on) another technician talking about communication issues. If it doesn't print from DOS, then the computer will give a variety of messages, including printer out of paper, error writing device, and write-fault error. Evidentally, she was very confused as to what this message meant, and called up our help-line and asked,

"Is there a difference between write-fault error and left-fault error?"

I was absolutely speechless.

okay.. some other guy at our support had told a customer to format c: and reinstall windows.

so, he makes backups of his work, formats and is going to reinstall windows.

that's when i get this call:

c: hi, i am suppised to reinstall windows. how am i going to do that?

me: you have a windows setup bootdisk?

c: yes

me: okay, put in the floppy drive, then put the windows CD in the CD-ROM drive and reboot your computer.

c: kay.. i'll do that.. tnx!

some time later this same guy calls again:

c: i rebooted but it wont install?!?!?

me: what's the error message?

c: "invalid system disk".....

me: is your setup bootdisk inserted?

c: yes it is..

me: well.. it seems damaged then..

c: would it matter that i formatted the setup-disk and used it to transfer som files from work?

me: it might have something to do with it yes..

*MUTE* laughing quite a lot here *UNMUTE*

then we setup the computer to boot from the CD...

c: it still says it wants a bootable disk?

me: is your Windows CD in the CD-ROM drive?

c: yes...

me: kay.. could you take it out and describe what it looks like?

c: it's all metallic and shiny

me: on both sides?

c: no.. only on the upside.. on the other side there is some text..

me: what does the text say?

c: umm... microsoft... office... 97...

me: okay.. that's not the windows CD, and btw, it was upside down in your CD-ROM drive.. it wont work upside down..

c: oh... where is my windows CD then?

*MUTE* screaming something not too nice...*UNMUTE*

me: i certainly don't know that..

c: oh?

after some discussion, the customer remembers he doesn't have a windows CD...

me: sorry, but then i cannot help you

c: you guys told me to do this, and now i can't use my computer!!! NOW U FIX IT!!!

me: i'm afraid i can't to anything to help you. you will need to get a Windows CD somewhere first.

c: i want to talk to your supervisor!

me: that is not going to change anything i'm afraid

c: F**K YOU!!! *CLICK*

i got the feeling he wasn't very happy with us...?

I was working at a small danish multiamedia school as

Tech support. One day i was in a classroom fixing some

problems. In the same classroom a teacher was telling

his students about the fundamentals of making homepages.

It was just before all the fancy html-editors hit the market, and notepad was favorite tool of most ppl to make homepages.

He told the students that, notepad couldnt be use to make

html pages, as it couldnt save as *.html.

I had to go outside for a moment.

Notepad normally saves as *.txt, but you just rename it to *.html in notepad, and voila..

I was troubleshooting a customers computer on when this happened

Me: Right click on my computer please..

Customer: NO I dont want to right click on your computer im calling about mine!

Me: sir there is an icon on your screen that says my computer.

customer: I dont see it(getting irate)

Me: its the one that looks like a computer

Customer: you mean this network thingie???

Me: umm no..

customer: OHHHH you mean BRAIN...

apparently he named his "my computer" icon to brain LOL

Crapintosh computers R the most useless puter's ever!!!! The

users R no better.

Every day @ work, (where I get stupid Q's from non-mac literate

nobodies. Hang on... someone's asking me another stupid question.

"Why doesn't my e-mail work?"

"Because"

There, that wasn't so hard was it? Now, the most common question,

(and the most annoying) is the following:

Lamer: Why won't my computer log in to hotmail?

Me: Because of the following lame excuses:

1) We have a single 56k modem shared across 13 computers

2) The computers are all crapintosh's, and only have 16Mb RAM

3) They also have an old version of Netscape that is NOT Y2K

complient, and so getrs error messages galore from Microsoft,

saying 'we don;t exist yet' and wierd stuff.

4) User error... errior... error... error... (the common 1)

Another great question is, "Why can't I open Netscape?" The simple

answer is, "YOU'VE ALREADY GOT IT OPEN!!!!! JUST OPEN A NEW FRIGGING

WINDOW!!!!" "oh. I'll remember that." (yeah right!)

Working away here at school is just soooooo hard...

but this site makes my 'lessons', (or lack of lessons),

easier.

At our (there are 2 of us *gasp*) school, IBM PC's are virtually

non-existant. We have about..... 2 many... macs. We

are the informal tech support for the whole school.

One day, after just setting up a quick n dirty appletalk network

we were surfing the net and stupmbled across one of the

most interesting programs we could find for the macintosh.

Netopias Timbuktu Pro.

Well, after reading what this little gem of an application can

do (for the tech-uninitiated, it is a remote access program

which has the abitlity to control the mouse and keyboard and all

open applications), we downloaded and set it up on 12 macintoshes. After having

2 double frees and no work to do, we were bored out of our

frigging minds.

Well, we hadnt tested this program out that much yet, and us with the administration

password decided to have some "fun" with one of the techno-dweebs.

this is what went down.

TL = Techno-Llama

T1 = Techie 1

T2 = Techie 2

T1: (opening timbuktu and connecting to the TL's mac, starting to

move the mouse in figure eights)

TL: (looking at the computer in absolute horror) what the..

T2: (knowing whats happening and trying not to laugh) whats the prob?

TL: my mouse is moving all funny without me (her words)

T1: (clicks on location bar and types "I am hax0ring j00 b|itch")

TL: aaaaaa! whats happening to my computer! (several expletives removed)

T2: Oh no!, youve got macNetBus! your CRT needs replacing with another PPP!

(we know this is wrong, just having fun with the TL)

T1: (opens and closes applications, changes background to "666") *giggle*

TL: how can i fix this!!!

T2: dont worry, the fbi, cia and blt will be right on it.

TL: someone from america must be in my computer!

T2: (not thinking of this, but good suggestion) yeah!

TL: (Runs out of computer area to tell librarian of situaton)

T1: (uses shutdown remote to remote shutdown TL computer(duh) )

T1 and T2 make themselves scarce and watch from afar

Librarian walks in and looks at the turned off computer

TL talks to librarian that looked similar to "it wasnt like that when i left!"

T1 and T2 go off to oval to have a good laugh for half an hour.

end note: we love techtales.com! we have many more, but often

too stupid for even here.

by

^GoNePoStAl^ and (#r][$

techtales@footersites.cjb.net

caller: how do I get onto the internet again.

me: Do you have Internet Explorer...the big blue E on your desktop?

caller: Yeah, wait, I don't see it. help me out here.

me: okay, go start, programs, Internet explorer folder.

caller: I still don't see it.

me: hmmm...see the black triangle at the bottom, click and hold.

caller: ohhh, there it is.

I do web design for a small company, so when a client does something lame to their computer, i often have to deal w/ it.

We had a client who couldnt quite master the whole email thing. She kept trying to check her mail, and "Explorer" told her the server was down. After trying to explain to her we only have one mail server, and nobody else is having trouble, we asked her if she was connected to the internet. Of course she insited she was, so the next thing would be to reboot because we couldnt get her to t/s the connection. "What good will that do!?" Grudgingly, she rebooted, mumbling the whole way how it wasnt going to work. Guess what! It did!

The funniest part about it was while trying to determine what email client she was using, she kept insisting she was using Explorer.. you mean Outlook? No! Outlook Express? No! Explorer! Whatever ma'am, lets reboot your computer... blah blah blah, after we get it back up, she goes "Oh! See, I use Launch Outlook... not Outlook!"

She was so proud.... LAUNCH OUTLOOK is my email program!!!

ha ha ha ha ha ah ah aha ha ha ha ha ah ha

Back in 1996 I worked for an ISP. One day, I got a pone call:

C: "Hello, could you please give me the Internet phone number?"

Me: "Yes, it's xxxxx" (I give him the number to connect to)

C: "No, that's not what I mean. I can log in, but I can't connect

to a Website. I think someone has switched off Internet. I need

the general Internet phone number to ask them to switch it on

again."

Me: Here's your number. Please type it in as I give it to you. There's no need to write it down or to keep it. 6-8, 7-6, 6-0, 0-7.

Her: I don't have to write it down?

Me: No. You'll never need this particular number again. 6-8, 7-6, 6-0, 0-7. (Pause) Now use the mouse to click the "OK", and that screen should go away.

Her: Well, nothing changed.

Me: Do you still have the serial number on the screen?

Her: Yes.

Me: And no error message?

Her: Well I don't see any error message.

Me: Well that's strange. Is there still a blank to type the number into?

Her: Oh, there's a blank. Did you want me to put something in it?

Duhh...

never before have i met someone that didnt realise you needed to put a pw into the connect to box but theres aomething new every day when youre on a helpdesk.

This lady and i had quite a long discussion about why she couldnt connect. All that she could say was that she couldnt connect, that a box that had duration on it ( so i thought she had already connected and checked that first) wouldnt go away and that if she clicked the box "everything" would dissappear. After a conversation in which nothing much was established but the phrases " i cant connect", "the box wont go way" and " no, i dont see whatever it is youre talking about" featured heavily. I managed to get her to see and click on her dial up networking connection. Then she said yes, that box has come up again and the light dawned. I go ther to put her password in and lo and behold sh emangaed to connect!! then i cracked up and laughed at my self for not seeing that one coming a mile off!!

Oh, man, I still can't get rid of my bumbling moron assistant. Last week I was assigned by my supervisor to test and distribute a pair of stored printers, a Mac Laserwriter and an HP 4m. Since we were out of any spare parallel printer cables, I had to borrow one for the diagnostics and wait until my supervisor came back from a trip to order more cables.

As soon as he gets back, he assigns my assistant to do the actual purchasing while I get her the part number I need. Since I don't need any more screw ups, I search on the internet the EXACT PART NUMBER, PRICE, AND LOCATION where she can dang buy it from! 10 minutes later, perfect, low cost non-IEEE 15' printer cable has been found, verify they're in stock. Then my stupid assistant decides to check the "catalog" we have for supplies that we order FROM THE VERY SAME RETAILER! What comes up? "The price in the book doesn't match the one online, book says it's $15 more, I think the book is right." The book is 10 months old! It's out of date! She yells right back at me, "No, the book has to be right, the online stuff is screwed up! If they don't match, the people who put it online were stupid enough not to see if they matched!"

Customer: When I try to connect I get 'modem not responding properly'

Me: OK, you need to reset your modem. Do you know which bit is your modem?

C: Yes, I'm not stupid you know.

Me: Sorry, please understand that I deal with a lot of people who wouldn't know and I have to make sure. On the back of the modem you will find a power switch, just turn if off leave it a second and then turn it back on again.

C: OK, I'll be back in a minute, the computers in another room.

'10 minutes later.'

C: Now the whole computers gone off and won't come back on again, oh and there's an odd smell a bit like burning.

Me: ( thinks: what the hell? ) Ok then, Mrs ____ I'll have an engineer come out to you today.

C: OK.

The engineer comes back to say that she'd pushed the 'power switch' alright. Only it was on the PC and was labelled '240/120 volts'.... this is in the UK of course. Bzzzt, bye bye power supply.

It took her so long to find something small enough to push the slider.

I work for a small ISP and one day the receptions walks into my office with what she calls "A VERY strange happening" with her computer at home. Now as a Senior Technician I have dealt with some frighteningly inept people, but this took the cake. I asked her to describe the problem, and the proceeded to tell me that her computer had been making a ringing noise since about 2am (it now being 9am). The first thing I asked is "Did someone leave a phone near the computer", to which she responded "Of course not, we aren't stupid!". I asked her if it was shut off, and it was. Confussed, I suggested she call home and have one of her family members hold a phone near the machine so I could hear the nice, which we did and sure enough, a ringing sound emenated at about 30 second intervals. Now at this point I'm thinking it may be an audible low CMOS battery warning. I ask the family member to unplug the computer in order to remove all power, and again it rings. Now I am at my wits end and about to start surfing the evil Dell site for a solution to this problem when the family member cheerfully announces that she has fixed the problem...

She found a cordless phone laying behind the computer when she went to unplug it. It had been missing for a few weeks and it's battery had gone low. And to this I respond, "Why isn't there a mandatory licensing for computer users?!"

(This it's not mine or the customers fault, i blame Microsoft for not enough research.)

C = Customer

M = Me

(First, in Sweden the curency is sometimes

expressed as "100:-" i don't know why, but anyway)

This lawyer guy, let's call him dialed in and worried

about a virus.

C: Whenever i write, there is a "Happy face" virus in word.

M: Well, have you tried the AV software?

C: Yes, and it say that there is no virus in it.

M: Hmm..

Anyway, the Customer came by for a virus sweep and i took

a look on it. This is the explaination:

>From the customer's document

"(cost's 350:-)"

autotext changed the last 3 chars ":-)" to a smiley

grrrrr.

(And then we can also mentioned a customer who called an

education company and asked "Do you have..Windolf?")

ok, this buddy somehow managed to stumble through a reinstall of Win95, and then calls up wanting the internet setup, running the ICW, it comes up searching for modem drivers, he doesn't have a driver disc, and Windows doesn't find anything for the modem, so I tell him, he'll probably have to contact a local computer dealer to have them install the proper drivers for the modem. But this guy considers himself a computer guru, so he wants to do it himself. So he asks: "But, can't I download the drivers using my Sega Dreamcast?" Ridiculing him under my breath, I explain that probably won't work. He's pretty sure that he can download the drivers onto his memory card and email them to himself and things will be alright. I walk him through the rest of the ICW and let him go, but fully expect to have another call asking how to get the files from his Sega to his computer...sigh...

I'm not really a true tech support person. I've been working with computers for a number a of years now, and while I don't do this for a living, I like to help out at work with there problems.

At weekends I do tech support, only in areas that I can help, on-line and this one came up.

Every time I put my big gulp on my pop out cup holder, it brakes, can you send me a better one?

The otherr technicians who had but a bid in, but cancelled it had put.

"Sure, just call 1-800-eats**t, and they should be able to help you out."

Definitely a case of PEBDAC, or maybe a ID10T error, and maybe (l)user as well.

Great site, if I need a laugh, always come here.

Keep up the good work.

Me (tech supp guy) at "Patty"'s desk. She needed some

things reconfigured in his mail client. So I sat in front of

her PC and asked her mail password.

Patty: "My password is 'Smith' and then 'Patty'.

Me: ok

So I typed 'SmithPatty'.

Patty: "No, no!! it is 'Smith' and then 'Patty'.

Me (knowing that something stupid was coming over):

"Ok, show me how you type it"

She sat at the keyboard and typed: 'Smith (enter)'

PC: 'Invalid password, try again'

Then she typed: 'Patty (enter)' and the mail client starts

without a problem.

Patty: "You see? that's my password: 'Smith' and then 'Patty'."

She had been getting in her mail for one and a half year by

entering the wrong password and then the right one!!!!

Well dressed Buisness Man: "Excuse me But this mouse doesn't work."

That was nothing new to hear as I've worked retail for sometime and know customers screw up the computers regularly. I step over to help the man. He was looking at a Compaq lap top and holding the large black power converter box in hand. He moved the thing around intently and stared at the screen expecting the mouse icon to move around.

My reply was simple, "Well sir sometimes that kind of mouse doesn't work. But this kind does." And showed him the touch pad on the laptop. Saddly enough the man never realised his error and was very happy to have a working mouse.

Some people just shouldn't have computers.

ISP Tech Support:

Caller: "When I turn on my TV I can't see the internet".

Support: "Are you at your computer mam"?

Caller (very frustrated): "I'm telling you when I turn on my TV I don't see the internet".

Support (confused): "When you turn on your "TV" what do you see"?

Caller: "TV shows and nothing else".

Support: "Is your computer in the same room as your TV"?

Caller: "Oh no dear, it's in the office".

Support: "Do you mind going into your office to look at your computer"?

Caller: "Hold on, I have to switch to another phone . . . Oh look, there's another TV in here . . . I'll see if this works (referring to the computer monitor)".

NEED I SAY MORE?

I work for a medium-sized ISP in the Midwest. Several months ago, we had a caller come in who seemed to think that we were a fountain of evil, and accused my supervisor of a massive conspiracy between our company and Microsoft to illegally erase his email from his copy of Outlook Express. Seems he had done a multiple-hour three-way conference call with our tech support department, and MS's department, for which MS gladly charged him a few hundred bucks. It got REALLY strange when my supervisor, after going round and round with him for an hour, asked point-blank why he thought there was a conspiracy...

Sup: Sir, WHY do you think there's a conspiracy?

User: Well, I'll tell you... you see, I had a very good friend of mine come over and install Version Five... and before he did that, and before I had my conference call with you and the Vice Presidents of Microsoft, my screen was a pretty blue color... and now, it's aquamarine.

(long silence)

Sup: SIR?! What does that have to do with your email, or the internet, or Outlook Express, or ANYTHING?!?

User: Everything.

...As it turns out, when he had his conference call with the 'Vice President,' the MS tech had him do a 'dirty install' of Win98 (installing over the currently installed, possibly bad copy) which erased his email, and Version Five was nothing more than Outlook Express 5. Just goes to show that the truth IS out there... and so are some customers.

I work for one of the second tier, but still large national Internet service and content providers.

Tonight I had a call from a gentleman who said that when ever he tried to dial in, he could hear a voice in the modem's speaker saying something about a party line.

At first I thought this would probably be a problem with his local telephone company, but on a lark I decided to check his dialer settings.

When I had him call up the dialer properties and read me the phone number, he gave me his own phone number.

This man thought he had to dial his *own* phone number in order to connect to our servers!

I am left wondering if he ever calls himself to see if he's home.

I notice that most of your stories deal with how the

technically savvy deal with the idiots who call.

Let me tell you about the other side of the conversation.

We have owned PC's for over 15 years and bought our latest

new PC from a major manufacturer. The CD-RW was not working. The required the tech to talk

us through opening the case and checking connections.

All the while he's mumbling about how much time the call

is taking. He is obviously either near the end of his

shift or is rated by the number of calls he handles.

After reseating every connection imaginable, the CD-RW

appears to be working. We then move to a problem with

uneven color on the monitor. His suggestion is to

defrag the hard drive then call back later.

We take the advice and let him go, knowing full well

what a load of BS it was.

I am sure that he thought he had pulled a fast one

on another idiot. In fact, we had just identified a

useless part of our lives and cut it loose.

So, the next time you pull a fast one on the unwary,

it may just be that the unwary have seen through the

scam and have decided to go for "real" help.

P.S. To top it off, he had the nerve to ask how

satisfied we were with the call.

I answer the phone and the customer tells me that they have just tried to dial up to our server, and the computer came up with an error that said "the connection you are dialing is busy or not responding." I then told the customer to close any windows they had open and get back to their desktop. He replied, "just the windows in my room, or in the whole house." Then he continued, "what would that have to do with my modem trying to dial a connection?" I had to try to refrain from laughing to tell him to close any open windows on his computer.

I was working in tech support for a software company when a customer called with a problem.

Customer: I have the new upgrade CD you sent me and I want to know how to install it.

Me: Just insert the CD into the CD-rom drive and the startup screen should pop up.

Customer: (After a pause) There is something wrong with my CD-Rom drive. The CD would load.

Me: Just take the cd out and make it is seated correctly and put it back in. It does fit, right?

Customer: Well it fits in the slot okay but I can't get the drive door closed.

Me: Drive door? Your CD-Rom has a drive door?

Customer: Yes. It is this little lever that I push down.

I promptly had to put her on mute as I realized that she had just put the CD into an old 5 1/4 floppy drive!

Me: Oh no, please take that out of there, this is the floppy drive and you are probably damaging youhr CD!

Customer: But it fit....are you sure it does not go in there?

I had her check the cd and she had managed to put a nice crack in it so needless to say, we had to send a new CD to replace that one. Ignorance can be bad but certainly funny.

I work for a global IT company who shall remain nameless. I support our RAS dial up users. I had emailed an instructor the solution to his problem. I made the mistake of assuming an instructor would be computer literate and could follow these very simple instructions. It is common for users to get "internal authentication errors" that stem from the Dial up Adapter being corrupt. Removing and replacing nearly ALWAYS solves this. (I have yet to see this solution fail).

The email instructed him to "remove Dial up Adapter, reboot, and add back in." on a Win95 PC.

The customer calls. After standard introduction:

C: Yes, I followed your directions but I'm still getting the same error.

I verified he was looking at the Network properties.

M: What do see in the properties?

He names off Novell and IPX protocals that our network doesn't even have but no DUA or TCP/IP.

M: Do you login to a Novell server?

C: No

M: How did it get there?

C: Oh, I just removed all the networking stuff and added them back.

M: (grumbling to myself) Do you see Dial Up Adapter?

C: No

M: Didn't you add it back?

C: No, I thought I did.

Walked him through adding the DUA, TCP/IP & configuring, removing the Novell, iPX, Netbeui. Rebooted, dialed in fine.

C: Why didn't it work before?

M: Because you didn't follow my directions.

What really chaps me is that most of the people I support get to travel the world and probably get payed 2-3 times as much.

Ya gotta laugh just to keep sane.

The school that I go to is a wonderful place (bleh)

The secretary in the front office is, according to

what she says, the 'fastest typer in the school'.

Seeing as she's a secretary, I never thought to

dispute this.

One day, though, I was listening to her tell her

little secretary friends on the telephone (whilst

I was waiting to go to the sickroom, by the way...

she was talking for 30 minutes while I stood

there waiting for her to finish) that she was

the fastest typist, and that she could type at

23 WPM!!!! She seemed so truly awed by this, that

I didn't have the heart to tell her that I myself

could type at 87 wpm without blinking. The saddest

part about it is that even if I DID tell her,

she wouldn't listen anyway. She's pretty docile.

Anyway, I love this site more than life itself.

Almost.

I do user and network support for a medium-sized school district. This is an average week:

Monday. Media Specialist (read: Librarian) calls and says server backup didn't run. A look at the log shows that she didn't put a tape in it.

Tuesday: Replaced 2 near-new monitors because some kid decided it would be funny to drop straightened paper clips into the vent holes. Yes, they were plugged in at the time.

Wednesday: One school's servers began dropping off the network. The assistant principle decided to 'rearrange' their wiring closet/server room to make room for the engine block from Automotive class.

Thursday: A lab teacher called and said 'I think I messed up.' (oh no) 'You know how you can compress drives in Windows? I compressed our whole lab and now they all run slow.' (really?)

Friday: Server at ...High dropped off the network. When I arrived to check it out it was gone. Just gone. I guess it walked out. We never found it.

One more thing: We have 2 techs, I administrator, 2300 employees, 14,000 students, 66 servers, 25 schools and 4000 computers. Anybody need a job in SC?

I was trying to help an user on how to use ICQ. Installed ICQ on his computer, and created a new identity to him. Now I put him on the computer and started to explain how ICQ worked. I asked him to click on the ICQ button. Then he asked me: With which finger?

While working at a major ISP I received a tech call from an elderly woman.

Her: "I'm on my way to the store to buy cookies but it doesn't say which brand to buy."

Me: "What doesn't say which brand to buy?"

Her: "The computer. I'm trying to get to the home page and it's telling me to get cookies but it doesn't say what kind."

Realizing what was going on I quickly said: "Well, Mother's oatmeal with icing is a very fine cookie, but why don't you put your user name in the area at the bottom of the page and hit your enter key."

After doing that she says: "Well, it got me to the right page but I still want cookies."

Laughing I told her to disconnect and go to the store. The computer would still be there when she got back.