Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

This tale goes way back to my first few weeks in tech support, I work for one of the large ISP's in the UK.

Customer comes on the phone yelling that he can’t connect. I like a good boy check the basics first, the account is fine and security checks out

Check all dial up network settings again all fine.

Ask him to try and connect. Just to check get him to retype username and password, stressing case sensitivity no joy

Error no dial-tone

Ask him what type of modem he has, he asks me to hold whilst he goes and gets it.

At this point alarm bells ring out, and I think to myself “ has this bloke not even installed the modem”

He comes back with the modem details, I ask if he has installed the modem “ of course I F****G have I’m not daft” and he gives me the full specs of the modem from the installation guide (he went to get them from the box)

Do some more checks all ok

Thinking it could be telephony problem I ask if he has a spare phone that he could plug into the wall socket so we can check the cable.

To which he gets really mad with me and starts shouting “ how can I f****g do that when there is no wall socket, I’m still waiting for the engineer to fit one."

I did wonder after the call while he spent 15 mins going through all his setting when all he wanted was a wall socket fitted.

People are strange

Stupid customers I can handle (usually). They come with the territory of doing tech support for a living. What really bothers me is cleaning up after the stupid techs.

Stupid Tech #1:

About a week or so ago I had a call from someone, and on looking through the notes from his previous call, couldn't believe what I had seen. The customer was dealing with a lot of crashes and freezes, and had asked us to walk him through an erase & restore of his system software. No problem, we like to do that. It's easy and we know it's a fresh start. During the process the computer freezes once while checking the HD while booted to the CD (tech has the customer restart and try again, it works the second time), then after the restore, the computer comes up to a black screen. Tech has him restart again, comes up this time, plays with a few icons and sends him on his way.

I'm reading over these notes, and red flags are going off everywhere. If the computer is started up from the CD (or to the hard drive after a fresh system is installed) and it's freezing, then it's fairly obviously NOT a problem with the software. Why the previous tech did not realize this is beyond me. I didn't even have to ask the customer what was going on; I knew perfectly well that his computer was still freezing. I asked him if he had any RAM besides what the computer came with (this is an iMac; that's about the only thing they can add internally and all the external stuff was already disconnected), he had. Told him to remove the RAM and if it's still freezing, take it for service.

I had another stupid clean up earlier that day but for the life of me I can't remember what exactly that one was about. It wasn't nearly that bad.

Stupid Tech #2:

This one happened this afternoon. I get a call about 15 minutes before the queue shuts off for the night from a woman who had talked to a tech earlier today because she was freezing a lot after installing a certain software package. once they got through removing the software, she started getting error type 41 (means the Finder is corrupted) every time she turns around. The tech she had started okay with this: boots to the CD and removes the corrupted Finder. From then I have no idea what he thought he was doing. After removing the Finder he had her rename the System Folder (if you're going to do that, there's no reason to remove the Finder first because you've got it out of the way) and then run a Restore. Yes, it fixes the error that way, but it also disables everything she's installed in her System Folder since she's had the computer. Generally with a problem like that, it's sufficient to remove the Finder (like he had done initially) and then reinstall the CORE OS ONLY so it doesn't touch the rest of the files. What makes it worse is that she told him she didn't want to do a reinstall like that because she had so much trouble installing her scanner software in the first place (that wasn't what was causing problems this time around).

Well I was looking all this over and just furious at the last tech for trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. What's worse is that now she's freezing again when the computer starts up. So I have her unplug all her externals and we can get in far enough to get a printer error... it seems that the print job that had crashed her computer in the first place was still trying to get printed and if it actually got sent to the printer the compute froze up. Without the printer connected, it just got an error that the printer wasn't connected. I managed to get the print job deleted, then started getting a DIFFERENT error with something completely unrelated. I set her computer to just use what it came with, and that was okay, so I added the printer stuff, and that was still okay, so I just let it be at that point... everything she needed either wasn't reinstalled yet or was already turned on. From there I helped her get some of her system back in working order... I went way beyond what we're supposed to help the customers with (and took an hour on the call to do it) just because I felt bad that the last tech had done such a lousy job.

There will always be customers that make me want to scream, but I doubt they will ever bother me as much as the people who are paid to help other people with their computers but don't know how to use their own. Cleaning up messes is my least favorite part of the job.

This is the funnist thing that happend since i started doing techSupport

A call comes in m=me c=caller

M:Thank u for calling ---- my name is ----- how can i help you?

C:Yeas i have the ---- on disk and the disk will not go in all the way

M:How far does it stick out?

C:About half the the disk is sticking out..

M:OK lets pull it out and try putting it back in.

C:Nope still half the disk wont go in

M:Ok pull it out is metal pice faceing towards The Computer?

C:Yes it is.

M:Ok is the round metal pice in the middle of the disk faceing up or down?

C:Faceing up

M:Ok Ma'am face the that down

C:Ok Done

M:now put in the disk

C:Still wont go in all the way

M:IS the metal pice at the end goign in first?

C:Opps sorry forgot about that... Oh it went in thank you very much!!

I tought this could not happen in the computer world but it does this happend a month after i started to work here...

This is another good story that happend to me

About 2hrs into my shift i get a call, i answer the phone preoperly and they guy is haveing a problems installign the program when he told me his error i knew what the fix was, so i started to help him, all i had to do was take out a registry key, i told him to click on start and i hear a button on the phoen being pushed thinking that he might have bumped i didnt think anything about it, he says ok, then i say go to run and i hear another 3 beeps, still not thinking anything about it i still instructed him on what to do, i asked if he see's the run box he says ummmmmmmm yeah, then i tell him to type in regedit, i then hear 7 beeps at this point i figured out what was going on and i asked him where he was typeing in regedit, he said he was hitting the numbers on his phone that spelt out regedit and run, i told him we need to type this on his computer then he says i need my computer on?

At this point i was kinda worried about taking him into his registry but i did and we fixed the problem...

Why do people like this own computers?

Whilst working for a well known Satellite shopping Channel in the UK a few years ago I received a call from one of the managers who claimed that his laptop wouldn't work.

He said that no matter what he did he couldn't get it to come on. I was only a couple of minutes away from his office, so I went over and looked at it for him.

I could see that the laptop was on, so the first thing I did was turn up the brightness control. I don't think I need to add that everything worked perfectly and I left the office with a smile on my face at the expense of the smug manager. The rest of the IT department had a laugh about it as well and told me that he was known to be PC challenged.

As the only technically-able person in what seems like our whole town I was asked to come and see why my friend's computer wasn't working. I dutifully went over to his office, expecting that perhaps the cable had come out of the PSU or that there was a loose connection on the power switch (both had been reasons for him requiring my services before). I went up to his office, and, as it was getting late in the evening, and it was starting to get dark, I switched on the light. Nothing happened. I turned round to him to ask if he had any spare lightbulbs when he said that no, the light wasn't working because they had the power off in the building as they were fitting new power sockets in the office downstairs. I looked at him and asked if that meant that none of the power sockets in his office worked either, and he said that it did. He didn't even begin to realise why his PC wasn't working - I just couldn't help bursting out with laughter!

I got a call last week that just screams "classic". I work tech support for a major ISP. We'd gotten a call from one of our more clueless customers. It was about her seventh call in two days; for some reason she could -not- seem to connect. Something about a password error. It was rather hard to tell, as every other word out of her mouth was "whatever". "What exactly happens when you hit 'connect', ma'am?" "Well, whatever, it doesn't work!" "What is the error message?" "Well, whatever!" (I wish I were joking.) After twenty minutes of this, I finally managed to decipher that she wasn't authenticating. Oookay. Check UID and password. UID in the dialer says "default". "Ma'am, the user name needs to say (UID)." Finally got her to type it in... then she wanted to know how to get it to save her password. So I told her to check "save password". "How do I do that?" *blink* So I explained to her how to put a check in a box. Finally got her off the phone and took a nice long break, thinking that I'd seen the end of her. No such luck; the next day I got her again. From the call logs, she'd called in several more times... with the same problem and resolution. But this time was different. This time, she had her "computer genius friend from across the street" to help! So she puts him on the phone... and I realize that these two are made for each other. He has maybe one more brain cell than she does. I -very- tediously walk him through the process of bringing up the dialer, then discover that the phone number in there has mysteriously changed to her home number. Okay. I get him to put the cursor in the phone number field and tell him to type in the number. Then I pull my headset off in agony as the sounds of telephone key tones fill my ears... the ID10T had punched the number into the telephone. "Sir? What did you just do?" "I entered the number like you told me!" "Um, sir, you need to type it in on the keyboard..." I finally got off the call, banged my head into my desk a few times, and laugh

ed hysterically for five minutes. Then shared the story with my curious co-workers... the woman has since cancelled her account, complaining that it was too hard to use.

This is probably the best one I can think of as MIS manager at an armoring company I worked at a few years ago.

As I was walking back to my office, via the HR section, I was stopped in the hallway by an excited clerk who showed me her monitor doing strange and wonderful things. Screen was flickering and jumping all around.

I also heard what sounded like arcing noises from somewhere in the room. I traced them to thier origin.

An electric heater was plugged into the same strip with her computer and the contacts to the thermostat on that heater were arcing.

I work in a photo lab where we do lots of scanning

and digital imaging stuff. The owner and I seem to be

the only photo lab employees within a hundred miles that

know anything about computers, so we field tech support

calls on a daily basis.

A woman in a town about thity miles away has a similar

piece of equipment, and she is constantly calling the owner

of my lab. He would mutter about how she didn't know any-

thing about computers, etc, etc, but I had no idea...

One day when the owner was away, the phone rang, and I

found myself talking to this woman. I explained the owner

wasn't in, but that I could help her. The conversation went

as follows...

HER: "The screen says 'See Tee Are El plus Ay El Tee plus

Dee Ee El to log on'."

ME: "...Well, press it."

HER: "Press what?"

ME: "'Control Alt Delete', to log on"

HER: (fumble, fumble) "Now it's asking for a password."

ME: "Type (the password, universal on this system)"

HER: (In amazement) "How did you know that?"

Since we’ve had computers at my house since the mid-eighties, my father and I often end up running tech support for our friends who are just now catching up to the rest of the world and getting one for the very first time, sometimes never having used one before. One time a guy my dad works with called and said that the clock on his computer was wrong. Dad said ok and told him how to reset it. A couple days later he called again and said it was wrong again every time he turned it on. My dad told him his computer probably needed a new battery, to which the reply was “My computer doesn’t run on batteries, it plugs into the wall.”

Dad: “All computers have a battery.”

Friend: “Not this one. I’m telling you, it plugs into the wall.

Dad: “Of course it does, but it also has a battery.”

Friend: (thinking he can prove dad wrong)“Then why can’t I turn it on if I unplug it?”

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

And then there was the time that my boyfriend was on DOS on his dad's computer and went to delete a folder. The only problem was he didn't make sure he was in the right directory first and so when he typed del *.* he deleted everything of the entire C drive.

How stupid am I though, I actually let him use my computer.

I belong to a national organization that allows you to invest in the stock market without using a broker. (Yes, it's legit. Yes, you can belong to the organization & use a broker or trade on-line. This is a support organization that gives you all kinds of help & info on the smart way to invest in stocks. Yes, we think day traders are foolish.)

Anyway -- I just attended one of their national functions. Two & 1/2 days of seminars giving tons of info. (I think I've sprained my brain.)

In one of the seminars on the final day -- the instructor is showing us how to use some of the basic forms used to research individual stocks. What they look like, necessary info, how to read, etc. No rocket science. Just basic info. He's got examples up on a large screen. Lovely colors, etc.

One woman needed to ask some questions. Seems her printer won't print out the lovely colors & when the charts are B&W, they're not as easy to read. An audience member pointed out that her printer won't print in color if it's not a color printer. You could just see that one flying right over her head. She literally had no clue if her printer was even remotely capable of printing in color. Then she said that her monitor wouldn't show the charts in color. (Me -- huh??) Later I heard her talking to another woman in the hallway. Seems her workplace had been getting rid of some old monitors & she had gotten one. She saw no reason to replace the old monitor with a newer one. The only thing I could think was that the monitor was so old it was monochrome.

Part of the problem was she was just computer illiterate enough to not be able to tell us exactly what sort of equipment she had & what it was/was not capable of doing. Needless to say, we were not able to help her in her quest for pretty colors on her chart print-outs. Fortunately, she didn't take up TOO much of the time alloted.

Straight out of highschool:

The librarian in my highschool called me at home one day to

say that the three IBM computers that I'd been maintaining

while I was in school had all suddenly failed. After I'd

asked her to make sure the computers were plugged in, I

arranged to go over the following morning. When I arrived

at the school, I noticed some of the pieces were powered,

others were not. So I checked the power cords. Turns out

that one of the power bars was plugged into itself. No

wonder the computers wouldn't work right.

*doh*

I was helping a customer one day with software I support

over the phone. The customer's computer was hung up (bad

enough that the only thing that worked was the mouse pointer).

Here's a rough transcript of what happened next:

Me: Do you see the reset button on the front of your computer?

him: Yep.

Me: Press it please

Him: Nothing happened.

*huh*

Me: Okkaaay... do you see the power button there?

Him: Yep.

Me: Press is please

him: Okay, it's off.

Me: Great. Let's wait about 10 seconds here.... and turn

it back on now please. Now, while it boots up, you're going

to see a program called Scandisk -

him: (cutting me off) Nothing has changed

me: (dumbfounded) what do you mean, nothing has changed?

him: the screen still looks the same, it's still not working.

me: (lightbulb comes on over my head) Could you describe

the front of your computer to me?

him: what do you mean?

me: are there any knobs on it? Anything with a sun like

symbol over it?

him: Um... oh, oh! OH! You mean _That_ power button!

*mute phone, bang head on desk*

Needless to say, this time we really did get scandisk on

bootup.

I used to work tech support for a school district that shall remain nameless. Some people need access to a student database and are givin a password.

I set up her account and give her a login name and password.

As I tell her this, she writes down her name and password on a "post-it" and sticks it right smack on the top corner of her monitor. I told her not to do that, and she could not understand why. She insisted she leave it on her monitor. Go figure.

A few years ago I was working phone support for a company that goes by the nickname Big Blue.

This is not about the user PER SE but about the absolutely strangest support call I have ever heard of.

I had been assigned this case for a certain software due to the fact that I at least appeared proficient at it.

Well, the user and I were going around and around on a problem for the better part of an hour and decided to break for lunch.

While on lunch I came up with a solution to the problem (and it did work mind you) and at the end of my lunch break. It is at this time that we take our trip into Tech Support Twilight Zone:

Me: Hello? Yes this is (ME) with (Big Blue tech support) and I am calling back to talk to (Mr. X)

Receptionist: Oh? I'm sorry, he is no longer with us.

Me (still not getting it): Huh? How odd, I was talking to him an hour ago. He left the company or something?

Receptionist: Sir, he is dead.

Me: Er, oh... (stunned silence)

At this point I was ready to offer condolences since he was not only nice but a technically proficient user, and heaven knows we need more of them around.

Receptionist: If you want I can transfer you to his replacement.

Me: (more stunned silence) Uh, sure!

I told my boss, got permission for a second lunch for that.

~A

During one of my calls, I was feeling in a rather good mood.

C = Caller

M = Me

C. " Is your server down "

M. " No, she's should be in the kitchen, making my supper. "

Both had a chuckle.

... you grab your realspace calculator and can't do the

simple division problem cos you can't find the / button.

And no, this isn't just a sad joke. It really had me stumped

a half second or two till I wondered what the button with

a horizontal line and two dots was for..... :(

Let me start by setting the skills of this customer

Someone that can turn on a computer, connect to the net, and chat, but when asked to go into "MY Computer" asks how she is supposed to get into your computer.

Anyway this persona rings me one day, says her new modem will not connect.

The most of the conversation went like this:

[me] have you loaded the correct drivers for the modem

[her] yes

[me] have you made sure your connection is using these new drivers.

[her] yes

[me] Have you tried unplugging any other phones on the line

[her] yes

[me] have you tried .....

[her] yes

[me] How did you know what I was going to ask you.

[her] *laugh*

[me] well if you have tried everything your modem is broken, take it back to the shop. Goodbye.

On another note, isnt it funny how its always your fault when someone computer stops working, it was fine the day before, but when their car brakes down, do they go to the dept of main roads and tell them its the fault of the roads because the car started fine yesterday?

I was asked to help a user when his keyboard failed. When I got to the workstation he was using MS Excel and showed me how his keyboard wasn't working by typing in a cell with nothing appearing. He then keyed down to another cell and did the same thing. He also pointed out that it had to be a strange problem because he could see what he typed in the formula bar, but when he hit enter and moved to a different cell, the information "just didn't stay where I put it".

Despite all the evidence that what he typed did indeed appear in the spreadsheet and all the other keyboard funtions worked, he couldn't figure out that he somehow changed the font color to white. When I pointed this out, he claimed that it just happened while he was working and that he had never seen the format screen before. Apparently this happened by itself just to piss him off!

I'm the manager of support for my company, and this one I cannot completely pass off on the user(s). I admit, I probably should have guessed this one...

U1 = CALLER

U2 = USER

ME = DUH!!

U1: "I think U2's computer is about to die!"

ME: "What's up?"

U1: "It's making an awful noise whenever he turns it on!"

ME: (I know U2 has a laptop on a docking station and loud noises are rare) "Put U2 on the line, please."

U1: "OK"

(pause)

U2: "I think I'm in trouble..."

ME: "What's happening exactly?"

U2: "The computer is making a loud buzzing/grinding noise whenever I turn it on."

(U2 turns on computer and I hear awful noise)

ME: (thinking maybe hard drive, but I'm honestly stumped at this point), "I'll come up and look."

(I took a new employee with me, so he could get to know some of the users).

ME: (after introductions all around) "So, show me the problem."

U2: (turns the computer on) "See? it makes this buzzing/grinding sound, but I just now noticed it stops when I move the monitor" (he demonstrates).

It turns out, there was no problem with the laptop or the monitor. The laptop was in a docking station and there was a plant on the windowsill behind it. A branch from the plant had gotten tangled in the docking station's fan and moving the monitor pulled the branch from the fan!

Moral of the story: we are not perfect... (boy, was I embarassed)

A customer came into the store the other day and said that he wanted a custom built pc. The customer was from a foreign country and spoke very little english, so he had all the spec's written down for us by his son. They consisted of the following:

1 Mid-Tower w/300w AT

1 32gb AGP monitor

2 128gb SDIMM

1 60mb fd (not a dirty one please)

1 250gb zoom

1 1.4gb hd

1 ergocentric keypad

1 balled mice (3 buttoned w/scroll lock)

1 faster modem (a drl)

1 dvd thingie

1 battery

1 reburnable cd thing

1 phaser printer (technicolor)

Needless to say, I was a little confounded. I showed him the list and asked him if this was what he wanted. Unable to interpret his reply, he called over his son. The boy was 6 years old. Need I say more?

A few years back I attended a university here in Sweden to study History. At the department building they had some old Macs for us students. Once a week a tech came by to check in on the computers. He told me one time that some of the students must be airheads or something. Many of them thought that, since you eject floppys and CD´s by dropping its symbol on the trash icon, they also could shut down the computer by dragging ITS symbol to the trash. This tech had a real good time trying to save the poor computers.

Years ago I worked with a small computer repair store.

we had recently sold and installed a new computer system

to a local business. About a day after we sold it to them,

the manager called to report the monitor was out. I sent

a tech out there to replace the monitor. He brought the

damaged one back, and we found nothing wrong with it.

The next day he called again, so I sent another person out

there to swap the monitor out. Once again, nothing wrong

was found. This continued for four days. I finally noticed

he always called at 4 pm every day, so the fifth day I went

out to the location just before I expected his call.

He was in his office, and told me the monitor had just went

out. I walked over to his desk, looked at the screen, then

turned around and closed the blinds on the window behind his

desk. The afternoon sun was shining into the window, making

it hard to see the screen.

I sat down and proceeded to write out a bill for sending

techs all week to his site. Never heard from him after that

incedent.

I work in tech support for a major isp in the South, and we have many novice users. One day, I received a call from a customer who was unsure how to insert our software into the cd drive.

Me: Put the CD shiny side down on the tray

Cust: What tray?

Me: There is a tray on the computer tower that slides out and you put the CD shiny side down in the circle on the tray.

Cust: OK...hold on

(pause)

Cust: It's out now.

Me: OK, now please put the cd shiny side down on the tray and push the button again and it will slide in.

Cust: OK, I put the cd on the tray...now, how do I get the tray back in the computer?

(The customer had completely pulled the tray out of the cd rom drive)

Me(teary-eyed from laughing): Well, sir, you need to take the computer back to the store and have them fix your broken cd tray.....

ARGH!!!!

Another story about missing the obvious.

I work for a majot ISP (not AOL). Today i recived a call from a woman who was having trouble getting a dial tone with her modem. She had called 4 times previously and the techs had put her through several steps in an attempt to get her modem to respond properly. When she called me I had her unplug the modem from her wall jack and connect a normal telephone to that same jack. She informed me that the phone line attached to her computer was "a lot bigger" than the phone line from her handset.

In all of the previous calls not one single tech had thought to actually check that she was using a modem and not an ethernet card with RJ-45 connectors.

me: Thank you for calling (ISP) Technocal support, My name is Edward, How may I help you?

Caller: I have a stupid question for you

me: There are no stupid questions sir.

caller: My wife and I are divorcing, i am moving to a new apartment and need to know how to change my phone number in my computer so I can still connect to the internet.

Me: Which city are you moving to?

caller: oh I am not moving to a new city, just to the aprtment next door.

Me: sir, why do you need a number to call if you are not changing cities?

caller: oh, I do nto need to change the number I call to get online, just my own phone number, so my computer doesn't get confused.

(I was wrong, there are stupid questions)

I do internet tech support for a company with various sites around the US. Our most entertaining calls usually come in from the sticks of the South.

A few months ago, one of my fellow Techies received a call from a user claiming Satan was the "Internet" and he MAKES her husband and 16 year old daughter look at porn. She wanted to know what she should do. Flustered by this particular problem my co-worker told her about the different types of net Monitoring/blocking programs (Net Nanny, etc...) She was greatful and hung up.

About a month later, I was the lucky one to receive a call from her again:

Me: Thank you for callin Us, this is Me, how can I help you?

Cust: I just have one question.

Me: Ok

Cust: What do you think of people who look at porn on the internet?

Me: Excuse me?

Cust: What is your opinion of people who look at porn on the internet? What is lacking in their life that they need to view that stuff?

Me: I really...can't say. Do you have a problem with getting onto the internet?

Cust: No, but I want to know why my 16 year old daughter is looking at porn on the internet.

Me: Have you asked her?

Cust: No, but I wanted to get some opinions first.

Me: .........

Cust: Well...

Me: I really don't have much of a say about the matter. If you don't want your children on the internet while your not there I can change your logon password so that only you know it, and only you will be able to access the web. Or you may purchase a monitoring/blocking program that will discourage anyone from unwanted sites.

(Now, all the while I can hear said daughter in the background, giving her mother suggestions on how to block the sites from the internet...and she was actually most helpful!)

Cust: Well, being born and raised a strict Baptist, and this being against one of our morals, I need to know why people have the need to look at this stuff. Why they would go against the 'rules'

Me: (finally getting a bit flustered myself and fed up) Well, it IS in human nature to want what we can't have. e.g. Porn on the internet.

Cust: ......But....

Me: Could I get your name, so that I may document this incase you have any further questions...

Cust: Oh, I don't think so. After what I just told you?? Thanks for your help...*click*

My desired result...

Customer: I cant get my email.

Tech: It doesn't show you are connected.

Customer: Yes, I am.

Tech: Um, I just checked the computer and it says your not.

Customer: My computer says I am.

Tech: Ok sir, what you may need to do is restart your

machine (full reset on a software based modem) and

give it another shot.

Customer: Ok, whats the reason I can send but not receive if

I'm not connected?

Tech: You probably cant sir - you aren't dialed into us right

now.

Customer: Yes, I am...

Tech: Ok how many phone lines do you have?

Customer: One...

Tech: Ok, we are talking on the phone right now right?

Customer: Right...

Tech: Ok, we are occupying a phone line then right?

Customer: Oh... Eheh.

*click*

Tech: Thankyou for calling ***%$£ Technical Support how can we help?

User: My machine is faulty it won't even turn on! This is serious because I want to use it for my business.

Tech: Okay has it ever powered up?

User: Yes it has the very first time it was brilliant then since then all I did was fit a security lock. And now nothing.

Tech: Pause....security lock...I don't understand...your machine is not a laptop.

User: I fitted it myself.

Tech: What did you do?

User: I drilled a hole through the side of the modem (meaning the base unit) and put a bike lock round it...I live in a bad area you see.

Tech: That may have affected things...

User: Really!

A client calls in and states she can not connect. It is telling her that her modem can not be detected. Well I proceed to check her modem properties and find out she has 8 different modems installed and has failed to remove the old combo card from her computer. Anyway, the combo card is still there and she now has a external modem and we proceed to eliminate the possibilites. She stated that it worked before she moved and now it does not. So I check all the cable and phone line connections to see where she has everything plugged in correctly. First thing, the line out on the external modem was plugged into the line out on the combo card, second, the phone out on the external was plugged into the wall, third, the external modem was never turned on to begin with in the first place. Come to find out this lady is enrolled in a computer class at a near by college and has been for the last few weeks. Lord help us all!

OK, so I readily admit that I was once a dweeb. First my background then my story.

I am a self taught computer tech and have been working in tech support for 2 years. I basically started tinkering with computers until I learned enough to get started in tech support. I have taken a multitude of calls including those from irate customers, total idiots who "know what they are doing" and irate idiots who "know what they are doing". It opened my eyes being on the other end.

When I was just a dweeb and learning my way around computers and the internet, I had a problem with AOL (told you I was a dweeb) After logging off, AOL started automatically updating itself. This suprised me for sure. I noticed among many files being downloaded, there was one called "imfart.but" at the time I saw this file I read it as "i'm fart butt" and imediately turned the computer off suspecting a virus. I promptly and indescriminately started deleting files many of which I had no idea what they were until Windows would no longer opperate. Oh I can only imagine the laugh the tech got when I told them of my dillema...well I learned my lesson and enjoyed the thrills of f-disk :)

Today, I "know what I am doing" but only after years of dweebdom!.

I worked dispatching techs for desktop support at a company that made missile defense systems for the government, so security was very tight at this company. I actually worked for a company that was contracted by this defense company. My coworker, John, got a call one day from a guy we came to call "Secret Larry." He had a PC that was not working correctly and needed a tech out right away to fix it. The only issue was that the machine was in a secured area and our techs could not access that area. With the obvious limitation at hand, John advised Larry that one of our techs would need access to the machine in order to fix it. Larry advised him that could not be done. John then insisted that our techs be given access to the machine; Larry again insisted that could not be done as it was a security issue. John then asked how Larry expected us to fix his machine if we could not get access to it. Larry stated that was our problem to deal with. John advised him that it was impossible for us to fix it without physical access so we would not be able to help him. Larry started yelling that we had better fix or he would have his boss pull our contract. I love people like that!!

Larry also pulled this one:

He had a defective floppy drive and needed a replacement (different machine!) We got him a new one and installed it for him. When we tried to take the old one back as a warranty replacement, he freaked out saying that we couldn't take it. We advised him of the need for warranty replacement and asked why he didn't want to let it go. He said that it was a security issue (again.) We asked him how this was a security issue and he said that someone could use a Q-Tip to remove confidential data from the read-head of the floppy drive! Need I say more?

Often as an internet help desk representative, you get to hear the silliest things uttered by humans. It makes you wonder if they even hear what they are sayin.

One of my favourites is:

Subscriber (after reinstalling a network interface card): It says that I should put the windows 98 cdrom in the drive and click ok.

Me (hoping against all odds that they will think this time): Okay.

Sub: So, should I?

(what I want to say at this point): No, put it on top of the computer and pray it develops the ability to learn through osmosis.

We recently upgraded from an old 486 to a celron 366 with most of the bells and whistles, or in this case, speakers and a microphone. I was going to teach my wife how to use the sound recorder in case she wanted to leave a voice message. I made a recording instructing on how to do the same. The first time she listened I was standing behind her watching. In the instructions I told her to click on the speaker icon on the desktop. I could not believe it when my wife, who had been using the other computer for over six months, started to look around on the top of the desk where the computer was sitting! In my best tech help voice, I explained I meant the desktop on the computer monitor, not where the computer was sitting. I still want to see an icon on my desk someday, though.

I work in a computer service store. One day, I was behind the counter when I saw a little old lady struggling to get a 19" monitor in the door. I ran out to help her and set the monitor on the counter. I asked her what was wrong and she said:

"Could you get some of the icons off the screen, they're blocking the picture of my grandchildren."

Needless to say I had to let the other technician help her because I couldn't hold the laughter in.

I received a call from a girl whos Dell Laptop didn't work. After she had it in the shop (where it worked fine) we gave it to her and showed her the dialups that worked and the two that didn't. She called an hour later; here's the transcript:

Me: What is it doing.

Her: No matter where I dial, I hear an operators voice.

Me: That doesn't mean your modems broken, it means the number is in accessible. What does the operator say?

Her: That the line is currently in use.

Me: What number are you dialing to?

Her: My house number.

Me: The one you are calling from?

Her: Yeah.

After spending 20 minutes explaining to her she was trying to dial HERSELF, I finally put her on hold to get a drink of water and wipe the tears out of my eyes.

I work at an internet helpdesk.

I got a call from a person who said she found internet so boring, and wondered why it was such a hype.

I asked her what pages she went to, and she didnt understand.

I asked her if she ever worked with internet before..

She hadn't.

So i though, back to basic: "Read me the exact text displayed on your screen"

And this i got back from her:

"Connected at 115200 bps. 6.753 bytes received, 2.235 send"

I was able to finish the call by telling her to install a browser and a friend who DID know how to use them.

About a year ago I was working for a rather large and over rated ISP (You've undoubtably heard of them), when I got a call from an elderly gentleman stateing he was having difficulties getting the software to install. After only about 5 minutes worth of teching the issue it turns out, he had placed his installation CD into his Sony CD player with was connected to his television via stereo cables.

Ah, more stories of the demon that is AOL.

One wonderfully clever user called me to let me know that her friend had sent he an email stateing that a particular file type was a virus and to delete them. After this was done she then called to tell us that her system would not boot up and demanded that we fix it. I told her that she would have to contact her OEM due to the fact that she deleted *.exe from her system.

On a related call not 2 hours later in the day I had a call from a user who deleted all of her DLL files since, "I never click on them and the take up allot of room." This one lucky enough was recorded and saved by the team as a momento.

The following is an expert from a conversation held with a member not more than an hour ago. I'll go straight to the epic portion of an annoying call.

"Your POP server is P O P dot D N V R dot (ISP name) dot N E T."

"Okay umm..."

"(repeat myself)"

"P O T..."

"(repeat myself, a little annoyance in my voice)"

**Mental note, User is apparently on pot**

"P O P..., What's the dot?"

"It's a period sir."

"Whats a Period?"

"A form of punctuation. It's just to the right of the M just above the space bar."

(waiting...)

"What's it look like?"

**Mental Query, How does one describe a period when he does not understand the concept of a dot...*

"Well sir, the period looks like a dot..."

"A Dot?"

"Yes sir."

"Umm..."

"Sir, might I suggest having someong help you find the period on the keyboard and call us back when you are ready to continue?"

"Umm sure."

"Thank you for calling (isp name)"

I have no idea if he ever figured out what a period was.

(.)

I work for a large ISP, and one day I got a lady on the phone. She complained that she installed the internet software, but that 'the internet did not work'. Now that is a phrase that annoys the hell out of me anyway, but I was young and unexperienced and naive back then so I asked friendly what kind of modem she had.

Customer: "Uhm... a modem? What's a modem?"

Me: "Thats a machine that allows you to get online on the Internet."

Customer: "Do you need such a machine then?"

Me: "Ehm, yeah."

After this lady I must have had millions of such customers. Some people... Dont you just feel like screaming at them: "RTFM - Read the Freaking Manual" ? *g*

A customer has just called us (a large corporate ISP), to say that they "seem to have deleted the contents of the /dev directory" on their hosted Solaris server. When my colleague phoned through to me to try and pass the call off, naturally I laughed nervously - surely *no-one* can be THAT dense?

But no, it turned out to be true. And to compound their idiocy, they then asked "can you restore just that directory?" OK, so how do you propose we log in, when you no longer have any /dev/tty's, or /dev/zero, or /dev/console? And if by some miracle we do manage to get on, where do we get the backup data from? And where do we put it, now you've done away with both the magnetic tape and all the hard disks?

This sorry tale happen more than a year back when I "was" still working tech support for a national ISP (which I, of course, left for a better and less stressful Web designer job). It's a little bit long!

We were just a few techs working the Saturday evening shift and there wasn't many calls coming in. I thought it would be one of those relaxing evening, until I got a young user (about 10 years old) from hell.

He said he signed up with us 3 days ago (under a promotion we offered with the purchase of a well known computer system), and couldn't connect since, because it gave the following error: "You've been disconnected from the computer you've dialed..."

Now that was very strange for we didn't have any disconnection problems in the city where he lived. If we had, we would have been flooded with calls. So anyways, I checked his settings, in DUN and Control Panel; made sure he's dialing the correct phone number; checked his modem (he had an LTWIN modem); showed him how to connect the right way...then said to try again. Gave him a reference number and my name (big mistake). 5 minutes later he calls back...Same error. Rechecked his settings, gave him a few modem init strings, said to try again. 5 minutes later he calls back again!!! Now I'm getting baffled here. So I gave him another POP# he should try. Since he didn't have a 2nd phone line, I said to try that. He calls back AGAIN (ARGHH!!) with the same error. Now this young boy is getting frustrated and me too. He then starts to complain, that he tried for 3 days to connect. He even asked his uncle for help and that he couldn't solve the problem.

He started to whine: "How would you feel to be a 10 year old boy, trying to go on the Internet for the first time, but couldn't because there's a problem with YOU!!!". What did he want me to say??? 'Uhhh. Poor little boy. Let me flip a switch and it should work now?' Out of ideas, I said to call the (computer company) that supported the modem at the time. They're may be a problem with the modem.

A while later, he calls back. (Computer company) didn't find any problems with the modem (no surprise there! I knew this was a PEBCAK problem). Now the young boy's dad gets involved. Saying how we disappointed his boy, etc, etc..

I asked him to explain step by step how he tries to connect. He opens the shortcut to ISP, enters the username and password and clicks 'Connect'. He hears the modem noise and that's when the error occurs. Again I checked his settings, even though they didn't want to cooperate saying we tried that a dozen times already. Out of ideas, I ask the father if he has a cell phone. He said he has one but it wasn't "available at the moment". Said to try again..

5 minutes later he calls back, but this time my fellow tech who sat at the cubicle beside me answers the phone, and the luser wanted to speak to me. Fed up, I said that I wasn't available to speak to him. My fellow tech speaks to them and check their settings once again. He convinces the father to get the cell phone 'when it is available' and the tech will call him back so they can try connecting. A while later, the tech calls them. He says to them to get connected. Then I hear the following words from the tech: "OK..you're connected...Now open IE..OK...Type this URL: www.yahoo.com....You're connected fine sir".

After fighting for a few minutes with the luser, about that we can't help him setup MS Netmeeting, because we don't support it, he hangs up. Waiting impatiently, I asked the tech what the hell happened here!!!!

The tech said the luser was connecting since day one, but...since nothing appeared on the the computer screen, they didn't know what to do so they simply UNPLUGGED THE MODEM CORD FROM THE PHONE JACK, and you guessed it, that's when they got the error. Of course, it was THEIR fault all a long.

There should be a separate exam taken before people can buy computers and connect to the Internet respectively :-).

By the next week, every tech in the building knew about this young luser from hell.

One of our "bright customers" i was fortunate enough to help here the call. I forgot what the problem was but we had to go to dos and do a scanreg/restore simple right.... Wrong there was a list of 5 dates i asked the client to pick the EARLIEST one. 5 minutes later nothing was picked.

computer are one thing but if i have to help you pick the earliest date AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! finnaly i had her read the dates and told her what to pick. this job id gonna kill m sanity but i love it

I was on my 3rd day taking calls for a major national ISP. This call was by far the most hilarious I had ever taken.

me: thank you for calling ********* Tech Support, my name is Edward how may I help you?.

Caller: yes I need you to help me get connected to the internet

me: Ok ma'am i can do that , may i have you user name please?

caller: it is *****

Me: Ok, I have your account here, are you at your computer?

caller: no my computer is in my house

me: ma'am, where are you?

caller: I am on the payphone outside my house

me: ma'am, why didn't you call me from your house?

caller: oh I can't afford a phone in my house, why do I need one?

And yet this woman has been allowed to leave her home.

I do tech support for a fairly large ISP/Phone Company. I

have gotten quite a few calls from people who know everything

but this guy beats them all. I get this call from a software

engineer who was having problems reaching a specific web site.

He was trying to get to Charles Schwab's site to do some trading.

Being a software engineer this guy decided that he was an

authority on networking. He had done a trace route and he

found the problem to be with another phone companies system,

this phone company does have an ampersand in their name.

Well after talking to some people at Charles Schwab he and

they decided this was our fault. He told me that what needed

to be done was have our routers reconfigured so that they

didn't route anything through the router and server from

the other company. After trying to explain to him that he

needs to call the other phone company so they know that

their router and/or server is down; he still insisted that

I needed to fix the problem and if I couldn't get him somebody

who could. After having enough of him telling me its our

fault I gave him the number where he could talk to our

Network Engineers. So they can tell him that its not our

problem and that we are not going to reconfigure all of our

routers just so this guy can trade a few stocks.

GRRRRRRRRRR.

This luser had just been upgraded from a dodgy old grunter

of a pentium to a nice newish pentium ii, much faster.

Our lusers log onto an NT domain after booting.

This one absolutely INSISTS that her old computer never

used to go through all that stuff (boot sequence) and

nonsense (logon sequence) that the new one does.

Naturally it did, and a damn sight slower, too. But no

matter what I tell this woman, she will not believe me

and is quite shitty that her new computer does all this

stuff, taking so long, when her old computer never did.

Now, yes, I did check she was shutting down properly. :)

She *says* she went to Start-Shutdown, and I know she did

shut it down cos it was also a noisy old beast and she

never had it running unless necessary.

There is absolutely no possible way that her old computer

simply popped up instantly into a networked Windows desktop

setup from a complete shutdown, but will she believe me?

It makes one want to be a demolitions expert instead....

I work in the data processing department of a rather large ()80,000 customers) local business. Part of the Data Processing department's duties are to maintain all of the PCs in the company. One day, the controller (a.k.a treasurer, CFO, etc., and ultimately my boss since the processing I do directly affects billing and accounting for our business) walks into my office and tells me his PC is making a strange beeping noise. The first thing that flashes through my mind is that the computer is beeping from the PC speaker on boot and I'm going to be faced with a serious problem. However, upon walking into his office, I see his PC merrily chugging away recomputing a spreadsheet. I ask him if the noise is coming from the speakers and he tells me that it sounded like it was coming from under the desk. He walks around the desk to show me where it sounded like it was coming from, and I crawled under the desk, and sure enough, I heard a beeping like the kind one would hear if battery powered equipment were running low. I ask him if his UPS is plugged in and he says he doesn't have one. I ask him if his notebook has been left on and he says he doesn't have one, so I patiently wait under the desk for the noise to occur again. It does, only this time it's behind me. I unfurl myself from beneath the desk and stand face to face with the controller. The noise occurs again, and we both look down at the cell phone with the blinking battery light clipped to his belt. His reply? "I thought it was strange that the noise followed me." I need a raise.

Anonymous Tech Supporter,

You're ignorant of the fact that your users are entitled to a full refund on the "OS" (Windoze, quotes around "OS" are deliberate) if they don't agree with the licensing terms?

Grow up, young "tech" (quotes again deliberate). Many of us use *real* operating systems on our hardware, and don't want to pay good money for bloated software that we immediately delete.

I can imagine how your poor customer felt, trying to explain the basics of contract law to a "tech" too green to know about Linux, FreeBSD, BeOS, etc. I'm surprised we haven't seen *his* posting about idiot tech support staffers here yet.

I worked as second level support for a large company, and generally do my own support at home. However, we use cable for the internet connection at home, and one night the service was (as was usual) down.

So I called up the ISP to ask if there was a network outage that hadn't been scheduled. After 20 minutes on hold, they pick up:

Tech: No-hope-of-service-in-this-lifetime ISP, how can I help you?

Me: Is there a network problem? I'm unable to connect to the internet.

Tech: Umm... I'm trying to ping your computer and I'm not getting a response. Is the modem turned on?

Me: Yes, I've got two steady lights. My computer is on, I haven't changed any of the settings, either.

Tech: Well, I'm not able to ping your computer... That network segment is down, and has been for the last hour. But I can't ping you, so there must be something wrong with your computer.

I answer a lot of questions about the specifications for several of the newest Apple products from people interested in buying one or have one already and are considering an addition to them. One day I got a call from an iMac owner with a very unusual request... he wanted to know if there was any way he could connect an old 5 1/4 inch drive (from a Commodore 64) to his computer. Apparantly he had some files from his old Commodore that he wanted to keep.

I let him know that on the offchance he should happen to find some sort of adapter that would let him hook the drive up to the USB port, the iMac wouldn't be able to read the C64 file format anyway.

He thanked me for trying, anyway.

My brother is a tech for AOL (yeah, yeah, I know... but it's free... and you can't beat free!) Anyhow, he told me a story that I almost didn't believe:

Tech: How can I help you?

Idiot: I signed up for AOL, and I bought a new modem, but I can't figure out how to use it.

Tech: Ok... is the modem installed?

Idiot: Whaddya mean 'intstalled'?

Tech: I mean is the modem in your tower, and is the software installed on your computer?

Idiot: Huh?

Tech: Sir. Do you know how to install your modem?

Idiot: (annoyed) Install it into what???

Tech: YOUR COMPUTER!

Idiot: Computer? I ain't gonna spend good #*&%ing money on a computer.

Tech: You don't have a computer...

This teaches a very valuable lesson. Don't go with AOL unless you absolutely have to (or in my case, unless it's free) because ^these^ are the people you are grouped with.

This really happened!!!

I had to share this with you.

I was working for a company in the U.K. providing 2nd line support on their hardware/software product to the European region.

Although this was a full time job, because it was a small company I also looked after the internal IT solutions.

One day I was called into the Managing Directors office, he told me that I was to buy a brand new laptop for the new sales guy who was about to start. In the MD's office at the time was also the sales manager for the company. This guy was really an A$$hole, really up himself and of these guys who would tell everyone how to use their computers. On numerous occasions I had fixed his laptop after he had messed it up.

It turns out the new Sales Guy was a friend of the Sales Managers, and guess what he had got him the job, a week later this new guy started. Lets say his name was “Bob”. His Laptop was still three days away from being delivered, so I gave him a standard desktop PC. Now this new guy was really not all there. You now the sort “lights are on, but nobody at home”. I asked him how much he knew about Windows, he said loads and then failed to find the Word icon. This was the shape of things to come. Bob called me all day about simple stuff, using the Internet etc. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but as the day wore on I realised this guy couldn’t even use a PC let alone sell our product (this were all software based). To make things worse he talked to me as if I were just there to serve him, really arrogant. The second day I found out that Bob had sold electric motors before getting this job!!

The next day the brand new laptop turned up, a brand new Toshiba. At the time I commented this was a real waste on Bob. However I set it up for him to use. Throughout the day he complained that it moved about on his desk and he wanted his desktop unit back. I put up with this attitude all day untill I left that evening.

The next day I arrived and went to my desk, on my monitor was a note stuck to the screen, something that really irritates me.

The not said , “Laptop not working, want my desktop back” no name nothing. I guessed it was from Bob

I went to Bob desk and he said the “laptops not working fix it!! you bought rubbish”

I went to lift it up to take to my desk and found it would not lift up. When I opened the screen up, my eyes nearly popped out this guy (Bob) had nailed a 6 inch NAIL through the keyboard & into the desk!!!!

I almost screamed at him what he had done this for, and his answer was “I wanted to stop it moving on the desk because you did'nt give me the desktop unit back!!"

As you would expect he was asked to leave that morning after the MD saw what he had done.

The laptop was a write off with the nail passing through the main PCB and throught the HD.

I left shortly afterward when the Sales Manager started to make noises about taking on another of his “friends”

How do these guys get through life!!

I work as a technician for a rather big company, one day, one of the users called me:

M: Hi this is xxxxx, how can I help you?

U: Hi, this is xxxx. There is a strange noise from my computer.

M: Uh, ok... and how does it sound?

U: Like a fan running on slow speed, with bad bearings and the sound comes every half minute.

M: Hmmm, strange....

U: Are there any fans in the computer?

M: Yes, there is. Ill get to your place and have a look.

U: Ok.

When I arrived to the users office, he wasnt there. When I was on the way to the users computer I heard the sound, and

it sure as hell didnt came from the computer, but from a little bird sitting on the floor....

If I had a nickel for every time I got asked "does that matter?" I could buy and sell Bill Gates. The classic story happened a few years ago. A friend of my wife had an old 386 computer she wanted to replace, but being low-income, she couldn't afford a new one. Since I had just upgraded my wife's 486 to a Pentium with a faster CD-ROM, etc., I offered to put the 486DX/4-120 M/B and older CD-ROM and sound card into her computer. It took a few hours, but soon she was up and running. The next day, her son called--every time he tried to install a computer game he'd get "cannot read E: (the CD-ROM)." I spent about an hour (long distance, my nickel) talking him through test procedures. I finally aksed him "Have you tried another CD?" His response was "No. Should I?" I told him "yes." He tried another CD--it worked fine. At that point, he piped up with "Oh, by the way, there's this big gouge on the shiny side of the CD; does that matter?"

if you are a customer and calls the tech support.

rule 1, do not loose your temper with the guy, there is a reason why you call techsupport, and you want the problem fixed.

rule 2, if a rockie techsupport man is answering, be patient remember if he does not know the answer he knows people that knows the answer.

rule 3, remember even if they give you an wrong answer, they are humens and not half semi tech guds, they once in a while can be wrong,

rule 4, when you call and a lady answer, do not ask to speak with a guy, they hire tech support people becous of there skill. Not how many kilo's they can benchpress

rule 5, if you have a bad product and you want to complain, remain calm and do not loose your cool, be nice and it wil be solved faster.

if you are an techsupport person and a customer calls

rule 1, be polite and be serius, customers calls you becous you know more then they do,

rule 2, if a customer get angry and starts complaining, let him/ her blow of steam and then fix it its the best way,

rule 3, if a customer knows more then you, there is no shame in answering i do not know but i can find out and call back.

rule 4, do not tell the customer to go and f*** off remember you may end up working with him in a year or two.

rule 5, when tings get bad and your overworked and you feel yelling to the customers, go and have a sig breake.

and a special rule, to both customers and tech peole, the mute button does not allways work, so tink about what you are saying before you say it. great site keep it up.

I used to be an IT prefect at my college. The head of IT was a woman who I shall name Boss. Normally, she is quite pleasant, however, when someone f*cks up, she has a tendency to lose her temper. And when she does, it can be heard throughout college.

In any case, there were some old machines in a classroom which had essentially became "owned" by the students who sat next to them. The students installed games and so on and had also stuck stickers on them. Plus all the usual graffiti. All of which is against the rules.

This is did not become a problem until it was time for those computers to be cleaned/upgraded and moved elsewhere. Those computers were due to be moved to another classroom and in their place would be placed some fresh new ones.

Boss and her minions had to work very late that night wiping all the $hit off the drives and cleaning all the computers before they were usable elsewhere. Needless to say, she wasn't a happy Bossy. Just to set the scene here, her being slightly unhappy warrants bystanders to cr*p their pants.

So I think you can picture what happened when one of the foolish students had the gall to go up to her the next day and ask her where "his" PC had gone. He lost all his games and all his stickers. He was very unimpressed.

Having understood what he was there to complain about, us IT prefect minions promptly vacated the area. We knew all too well.... (Picture people running away from an explosion)

Again, it could be heard throughout college. Another casualty of war. Nevermind.

Being an IT prefect wasn't that interesting but you were allowed multiple logons and the ability to blast fools who annoyed you. During my 2 year sentence allsorts happened. Here are a couple I can still remember:

I'll never forget the occasion when a tiny whimpering little year 7 with a nervous look on his face came into the 6th-form IT room with a floppy disk. He'd been sent here by the librarian (MISTAAAAAAKE) who had told him what the problem was and how to fix it (BIIIIIIIG MISTAAAAAAAAKE).

No offence to the librarian, but he doesn't know jack.

The poor kid had been using Office 97 on his home PC to write an essay. Arriving at the library, he was unable to open his document because they only had Office 95 installed.

At this point the librarian must have stepped in and instructed him to visit the 6th form IT room where they undoubtedly had Windows 97, which would solve his problem.

OK, it's not that funny, but seeing a whimpering little year 7 enter the 6th form IT room searching for a PC with windows 97, it made us all chuckle. Especially since he was foolish enough to listen to our nice librarian.

That was probably a one off, though, as most year 7s were cocky little ********* who thought they could get away with anything.

On another occasion, one said cocky little year 7 came in to our IT room (which he wasn't allowed to be in BTW), he sat down next to me and proceeded to log in. He was snickering and whispering to his friend so I thought it could be a good time to hide my IT prefect badge and see what happens.

He had found a porno CD and thought it could be a good idea to install it's viewing software on the PC and use it to view the porn. Not contented with this, he also felt the need to brag about it to me.

I showed him "the badge" and sent him to get blasted.

Muwah-hahahaaaaaaaaaa

That's long since been over, however I've been contemplating getting a temp job on a helpdesk. Strangely enough, reading the stories on this site has encouraged me! I like to practice my satanic laughter. Hehehehe.

I do tech support for a large EDI services provider. I get

all sorts of callers, some smart, some brain donors, but

this one I just had to share:

Me: ***, this is ***, could I have your account and user ID?

Her: (information)

Me: And how may I help you?

Her: We have these two computers? and we're going to be using

both of them? and we want to know if it's possible?

to get some of the documents into one? and some into

the other?

Me: (trying not to call her Moon-Unit?) And how will you

differentiate between the two?

Her: (longish pause) How will we what?

Me: How will you know which ones go to which machine?

Her: (a little indignant) We just WI-uhll! ("will" in two

syllables)

Me: Sounds like you need another user id. Let me transfer

you to that area.

I called to transfer, and got someone from that group on the

line (let's call him Bill). Before I conferenced "Her" in, I

gave Bill the rundown, in the same singsongy voice. He was

laughing when I conferenced her in, and I dropped off after that.

He called me later. All he could say, through the laughter,

was, "Payback is a bitch, buddy" and he hung up.

All in a day's work...

I work at a fairly large ISP. Just today I got a call from

a lady who was having problems getting her e-mail. She said

she already talked to other techs and has had the same

problem for three days. She couldn't get her e-mail.

Now she was able to receive her e-mail but it got to

"receiving 4 of 29" and it froze up. Before I could tell

her that it was probably just a large message and not locked

up I asked her what e-mail client she was using. She said,

"What??". Thinking she just didn't hear me because I was

speaking rather quickly I slowed down what I said and asked

her again. She then, in a very condesending voice; responded

"What does that mean??". I asked, "What do you check your

e-mail with ma'am?". She replied, "I don't know!! With my

mouse!!". At that point I had to put her on hold for about

ten seconds so I didn't laugh at her directly. She disconnected

the call before I could get back to her. I have never seen

a mouse get someone's e-mail for them.

Maybe its new hardware?? (Yeah right, LOL)

In my job as a tech for a major DSL ISP, I often come across

unbelivable stories. One of my more interesting recent ones

involved a man who wanted to connect using his dialup modem.

Me: Do you have a dialup modem.

Cust: Um, I think so.

Me: Do you have a dialup connection?

Cust I don't know(translation: no)

Me: Well then, I'll need you to click on My Computer, then

click on Dial-up Networking.

Pause...

Me: Are you there yet?

Cust: I clicked all over my computer and nothing happened.

Me: Are you clicking on the My Computer icon?

Cust: Icon? Where is the icon?

Me: On your desktop.

Cust: Of course my computer is on my desktop; where else

would I put it?

Me:(Muted)I really think you need a cable service.(Unmuted)

When I was in 8th grade (couple of years ago), I knew more about computers than anyone in my computer class (including the teacher). So naturally, whenever a computer broke in the entire school, she send me to fix it. One of the teachers, Mr. Smith (names have been changed to protect the stupid) had a plotter that he could not fix. It was a serial plotter, and he had called tech support several times to get the proper bit rate, parity, and all the other $h1t involved. anyway, I went in there, checked the settings, tried both COM ports, but it still wouldn't work. I figured this HAS to be on one of the COM ports. I looked in back, and instead of the standard 9-pin to 25-pin modem cable that was supposed to be connected to the plotter and the computer, he had a 25-pin serial extension cable plugged into the parallel port! I went to his cabinet, got the proper cable, and Voila! it worked perfectly. What creeps me out is that he had 3 technicians come out and look at it. I guess it's not just the users that are braindead.

I work tech support for a large EDI services provider. I try

to keep things businesslike, but sometimes my playful side

will come out.

Yesterday I had a call from a guy who was skilled in his

field, knowledgeable about the product, and seemingly

harried after a long day or problems. He requested a change

of password. I had him listed as the primary contact on the

account, but just to play it safe I told him I needed to

call him back. (He could be ANYONE, after all!)

He seemed a little frustrated by this, another in a seemingly

endless series of delays, but he agreed.

I called him back, and as soon as he answered, I said, "Hey,

meester, I sell you password cheap, hokay?"

Granted, it was a big chance to take, but it was 1) completely

spontaneous, and 2) totally successful. He laughed for

a couple of minutes, and said, "Thanx, man, I needed that."

I changed the password as he requested, and that was that.

Nice to know I can brighten someone's day. We are *support*,

aren't we? ;-)

A few years ago I worked on a help desk in London. A field engineer called asking for instructions on installing a CD-ROM Player.

Help Desk)Hello Sir,how can I help you?

Caller)I am installing a new network and need help with installing this CD-ROM.

Help Desk)What seems to be the problem?

Caller)I need a procedure to complete this task.

Help Desk) Sorry....you need a writen procedure to install a CD-ROM Player?

Caller)Yes....I don't know how to install this. I have numerous cables and I don't know what they connect too. Can you please forward me a writen procedure?

Help Desk)We do not have such a procedure?

Caller)Can you then walk me though this?

Help Desk)I'm sorry sir but I am unable to provide this information to you.

At this stage the caller became somewhat upset and demanded advice. I was relunctent to walk the him through this because of the potential liability placed on my company should he make a mistake. For this reason alone I was unable to provide the requested information.

After the caller had kindly cursed me and my family for approx 1/2 hr, I responded to him with the following statement.

"Its like driving a car sir......If you don't know how to do it and you are not qualified to perform it, then you shouldn't bloody do it"

It is absolutely amazing to think that this cowboy actually installs networks.

I just recieved my very first "TechTale Call". I love this site but never thought I would be speaking to an idiot....til now. I get a call from a very foreign man. He was unable to connect to the internet.

After we determined that he was connected as we spoke I had him disconnect. There was this 5 minute silence as he did so. I'm not sure what that was all about but, okay. Anyway, I had him reconnect to the internet, and he did.

Aparently after he connected and tried to find a web site I found what the problem was. When Internet Exploiter 5 loaded up it gave 2 options, "Work Offline" and "Try Again".

That's right, this poor guy has been clicking "Work Offline" and aparently it has prevented him from surfing the net!

Some people need to take 5 minutes and read some of these errors before calling!

A customer just called into my office. (ISP)

Cust: How do I get the internet?

Me: One minute, could I get your email address or billing number please?

Cust: My what?

Me: Email address or home telephone number.

Cust: I dont have an email address.

Me: Could I get your telephone number then?

Cust: I don't have one of those either, how do I buy the internet?

Some days...

What is your Password??

Password

I can't tell you.

Stars

I don't need a password I'm a _____ (fill in title)

I don't have a password that's why I'm calling.

They never gave me one.

Can't I use yours??

What type of machine are you using???

PC

Biege

A Computer

A Pentium V

AMDK9

Slow

(Monitor Type)

A Mcdonalds'

Windows

Old

DOS or NT I think

What operating system are you using???

Windows

Windows 99

Windows 97

Microsoft

Norton

NTFS

FAT32

PC Manufacturers' Name

Bios

Office

Lotus

Outlook

What does it say in the USERNAME box??

I don't know

Username

Gobbeldygook

(Company Name)

Windows

What does it say in the PASSWORD box???

I don't know

Nothing

Stars

Asterisks

What does it say in the DOMAIN NAME box???

(Users Name)

Domain

(Company Name)

It's Blank

Microsoft

(Users' Password)

I can't dial in!!!

Does your modem make any sound when you try??

I turned it off - it bother's me

It makes a screechy noise

Some lady talking

Some Guy Yelling "HELLO HELLO THIS IS NOT FUNNY"

The Operator

A busy signal

3COM/USRobotics

Still there??? After more than 10 years of Help Desk/Field Service it isn't even funny anymore. Kinda makes me sad.

I work for one the largest ISPs in the US. Therefore I obviously get my share of bad calls. This is one of the best.

One of our members called up very irate because she hasn't been able to recieve her email for two weeks. Before I went through my normal trouble shooting I asked why shy hadn't called in about this earlier. The answer was as follows.

Member : "Well I've been emailing your email support people everyday but those lazy bastards haven't sent me anything back yet!"

Hmm.... you cant get your email and you're trying to use email support. Nice.

>From one of my staff actually :

One of the staff asked how to type up an email in Outlook, and format it the way he wanted it. The actual question was "How do I start typing a new sentence on a new line in an Outlook email, without having to type ALL the way to the end of the line and wait for the email to go to the next line by itself??"

To which our techie leaned over the keyboard, and hit ENTER.

Apparently this staff member had been wondering how to do this for a couple of months.

I would call this 'Techies revenge', but I didn't experience

it personally. This is a story that is reported to have

happened to our AS/400 Hotline back in the early 90's.

The environment: In our company we have been using IBM's

AS/400 at that time to manage our shift workers. Thus the

people dealing with those systems typically were those

resposible for the personnel, all of them non-techies.

The standard printer included was a Mannesmann Tally MT330,

which had some kind of plastic cover on it which had to be

temporarily removed for refills of paper and printer

ribbons; when this cover hadn't been closed accurately, the

printer didn't work but kept making a beepy noise every

2 or 3 seconds.

Caller: 'Hello, I've got a problem'

Hotline: 'What is it?'

Caller: 'My printer isn't working'

(Through the phone the guy from the hotline, who had suffered

from silly calls all day long, could hear that typical beepy

noise.)

Hotline: 'I see. Well, please turn your monitor towards the

printer!'

Caller: 'Ok.'

(One could hear him rearrange some things on his desk...)

Caller: (having returned to the phone): 'Ok, I did it!?!'

Hotline: 'Ahh, now I can see what's going on: your printers

plastic cover isn't closed...'

Needless to say that the guy from our hotline had a

nice talk to his boss after this... but oh, it felt so good!

Unlike other techs, I will have to give out my place of work. I work as a Help

Desk Technician at DeVry. This is the school that most of you may have seen

on TV. If not, this is a school that is almost always advertising on TV about how

good a technical school they are.

In either case, I get this call and it goes something like this:

(This is me thinking)

Me: Help Desk, (my name) speaking. How may I help you?

User: Hi. I have a problem with my computer.

Me: Whats wrong?

U: I am not able to boot it up.

Me: What is your department?

U: Huh?

Me: Are you a student?

U: I guess.

Me: (You guess?) You guess? We don't support student's personal computers. Just what's in the school. Well, I think you can ask your professor if he can make a project out of it if you are in CIS [our Computer Info System course] or EET [our Electronics Engineering course]. Or you can probably ask your classmate about it.

U: Professor? I don't know any professors. I went to a computer shop about this and they cost an arm and a leg. When I asked them if there was anyplace else that was cheaper, they said call DeVry.

Me: Are you affiliated with this school in any way?

U: No.

Me: (Maybe the other tech was sarcastic) I think the person who told you to call here was

probably joking. He probably meant "if you want to do it cheaper, learn to do it yourself and go to DeVry". Again, we only support computers in the school.

U: Well, I'll take a class there.

Me: Then you will have to contact our Admissions Department.

U: How much does it cost for class?

Me: A class? Madam, this is a fully acredited school. I'm here for my Bachelors, and if you come here, that's what you're getting.

U: Well, how much is it for a few classes?

Me: (ARG! What is this, a single-serve school?) Lets just put it this way... I am on Financial Aid and my payments starts after I graduate. It's been almost $3,000 a trimester which is 3 months long, and with my current major, I am in for 10 trimesters. Do the math.

U: Ah, shit. Forget it then. (click)

You know what though? What's scarrier is that the professors and staff are just like this lady here.

--Nad Masters

First up, I love working for my employer; we've got mainframes, midranges, NT, Novell, ethternet, token ring, satellite, imaging; so many toys, so little time.

I'd been transferred off out of the Computer Room/Help Desk to focus our midrange systems for about 6 months, then transferred back when someone quit when this happened:

I get an interoffice email from a user asking me to "transfer" his email to another printer. Simple emough, but the user neglected to tell me the "from" device. I bounce the email back asking that question, and a few minutes later the phone rings.

Me: Computer Room

User: This is **THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD in EAST B.F. EGYPT** and I want to to transfer my messages to printer 9999

(the type that pronounces their name, title & location in cap, trumpet flourishes, the whole nine yards, not to mention that they gave Al Gore the idea to invent the Internet)

Me: No problem, like I replied to your email, I have to know the printer you want them switched from

User: I want them transferred, not switched, and rght now!

Me: (into robot mode) I'm sorry, I can't transfer to a printer number unless I know where I'm transferring from

User: I call up the Computer Room every morning and tell them to do this, are you stupid or something?

Me: (remembering the First Step, he's powerless over computers and his email is not printing) How long have you been doing this?

User: Since the printer was installed 5 months ago and what the f*ck does that have to do with it? I want my f*cking messages now!

Me: (remembering Third Step, came to believe that the Operator is greater than he is, and can restore his email) One moment, I'll check into it (put him on hold)

Our internal email is a reliable, mostly user proof mainframe based package (that HATES tildes. When I check the status of the printer I found it stopped, which is wrong. Going into the settings, I found that it was configured to stop when it was done printing messages, rather than going to sleep. I changed the setting, and opened up the line again.

Me: Your messages are printing now

User: No they're not, I'm righ next to the printer & (sssscccccccchhhhhrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzz - love dot matrix printers ;-) ), oh, they are.

Me: The printer wasn't configured properly, it would shut down after it printed your batch of messages. Didn't you wonder why you had to call every day?

User: I don't want it to print my messages until I tell it to!

Me: I'll put that into the configuration, have a nice day

(click)

The sad part about this, is that the other Operators that had been taking this maroon's calls every day let this go on for 5 months without wondering why and getting it fixed.

I'll be back with

I work in tech support for a department of about 250 people at a very large organization.

We recently pulled an ancient IBM computer with 2.5 MB of RAM from an unused desk in the middle of a hall to be discarded. I was asked to turn it on to see if there was any recent data on it's hard drive because we didn't want to throw it out without recovering the data. It wouldn't boot up because of a minor hardware failure so I notified the person who owned it that it wouldn't boot and that I couldn't get it to boot and that the hard drive was a proprietary IBM hard drive and we no longer had a computer that the drive would work in so we couldn't get any data from the drive. I pulled the drive just in case and threw the rest of the computer in the trash.

The next day we got a frantic visit from the secretary of the person who owned that computer. She told us that she had been using the computer to maintain some mailing lists in Word Perfect 5.1 on that computer and that she didn't have any backups. Further investigation revealed that she was told to get the data off of that computer 5 years ago and put it on her desktop computer. She has been told repeatedly for the last 5 years that she has to get the data off of the computer and store it on her computer in her office and she has ignored those orders.

She told me how to get the computer to boot so I booted it up to discover that the only way of getting the data off of the computer was to connect the computer to a printer and print it out. The floppy disk was defective and there aren't any network drivers installed for the NIC. I told her to come and print everything out because I was going to throw the computer out after she printed out her data and that she'ld have to retype it.

She then asked me why we couldn't make an exception for her and let her keep that broken PC running with irreplacable data on it. She only wanted to use it for that one thing and she didn't want to have to learn how to use MS Word to print out mailing labels. She didn't understand that the computer was broken and one day she'ld lose the data on it with no way of recovering it and that if I said yes I'ld get in trouble with her boss when the computer died completely.

Being in the tech support field enables me to not look stupid and have some computer literacy when I have to rely on others. Being a DSL subscriber with my local telco, I didn't need to call them too much unless I had exhausted all my resources and know-how. One night, I had reformatted my HD (not because I had messed up, it's my usual monthly ritual with Windows) and my ip had changed and I wasn't receiving an internet connection. I usually ftp files from work and my ip had remain unchanged for about 6 months. I called up my telco and it went something like this:

Them: Thanks for calling (telco), how can I help you?

Me: I don't have an internet connection and my ip has changed. I thought my ip was static.

Them: It should have been static. Are the lights on your modem on?

Me: Yes. Ma'am, the lights are on, my TCP/IP configurations are correct. I can't ping the gateway. I just want to know if the internet is down on your end, if you're doing maintenance or something.

Them: Not that I'm aware of. Let me get your phone number and I'll call you back.

Me: xxx-xxx-xxxx. I need to find out what's going on because I have an internal network here.

Them: Sure thing, sir. We'll call you back with 1/2 hour.

They never called me back that night and my internet was restored the following morning.

Some time later...

Me: Hello?

Them: This is so-so from (telco). This is the follow-up call to the technical problem you had.

Me: Can I get your name first?

Them: so-so.

Me: Can I speak with a supervisor there please?

Them: Sir, I'm sure that we can handle whatever problem you have. If it needs to be escalated, I will have someone else evaluate the problem.

Me: That's why I want to speak with your supervisor. Last time someone from your ISP said that to me was two weeks ago and this is the first call I've received since then, even though you said you were going to call me back in 1/2 hour. If this is the response time that you pride yourselves on, you guys are in a whoooole lot of trouble.

Needless to say, she transferred me to her supervisor and she assured me that it was a fluke on their part and it wasn't going to happen again. Somehow, I don't believe them. If I get another problem, I'll be sure to wait a day or two before calling them. That's a lot shorter than a couple weeks.

I have been working with personal computers for more than 20 years, and this has got to be the single dumbest thing I have ever experienced.

In the late 80's I was service manager at a Computerland in Florida. One day I got a call from a large bank informing me that one of their computers was "acting funny." Since they had no on-site service agreement I asked that someone bring it in to the store for service.

About an hour later a young lady brought the PC in question in for service. I hooked it up and turned it on, and it worked perfectly? I asked her what the problem was and all she could say was that it was "acting funny", but it seemed to be OK now. I gave her my card and she left, no charge this time.

15 minutes later she's back on the phone, same problem. I have her bring it in and inform her that I'll be running a full diagnostic over night, but I'll call her in the morning with the results.

The PC tests out fine, and I returned it to her the next day after a minimal charge.

15 minutes later she calls me and informs me that it's "acting funny" again. I'm getting hungry and it's slow so I tell her that I'll stop by on my way to eat and look at it.

When I got to the bank I immediately see what the problem was; she had refrigerator magnets stuck all over her PC. She was taking the off before she brought it to our shop so they didn't get lost.

I explained that computers use magnetic fields to store information, and that with all of those magnets on her PC it was unlikely to work properly. She said, and I quote: "But they look so cute!"

*sigh*

"Hi, this is Star, can I have your problem number please?"

lUser reads off phone number with area code.

"No, the six digit problem number they gave you (mute) six seconds ago. (/mute)"

'Oh, ok. (phone number with area code'

For just this reason, my computer's wallpaper is green text on a black background 'Smash head on keyboard to continue'.

Not 10 minutes ago I answered a call at a LARGE national ISP. The caller had a message in his mailbox that was too large and wanted it deleted. He was also having connect speed issues. After deleting the message that was oversized I walked him through checking settings in DUN and in Modem properties. We lowered the max speed in DUN to 57600 and proceeded to Control Panel to check the modem settings and max speed.

After I instructed him to click on PROPERTIES I heard him yell "OH SH*T".

It seems that the member had hit REMOVE rather than PROPERTIES.

To say the least I gave him his case # and sent him off to re-install the modem...sadly he did call back and gave another tech a headache.

A friend of mine told me this one.

He works in an oil service company, and they needed to get an computer online to the company network.So they called IT dep. and got a 10/100 network card which he installed. All works fine and everything. A month later their dep. got new computers with an on board network card, so he doesn't need the one he had loaned. He goes up to the IT dep. to deliver the card, but is met by a new note on the door. - All enquiry to IT is either to be phoned in or mailed. IT Service -. My friends thinks, okay, i'm just gonna deliver this card and knocks on the door. A man open the door and points to the note." You have to either phone or mail us. sorry" And shuts the door. My friends stands there , paralyzed, then return to his office. His is about to pick up the phone when he gets an idea.

He places the network card on scanner, makes a fairly good scan, mails the picture with the text: Just returning the network card I loaned. Thanks.

I do support out with the customers, and once i got this strange problem. The user would login in the morning, but when she came back from lunch, she would always get the you typed the wrong password message.Being a little smart she would always reset her computer befor her account got locked.

So when I came over to her I had to test this. She was logged on and I pressed ctrl+alt+del and locked the computer. Pressed ctrl+alt+del once again, asked user to type pwd. err: wrong password. Strange.. User told me the password, I typed it in, err: wrong password.I reset the computer, pressed ctrl+alt+del and asked her to login.

She typed the password and ending it with the no.1 on the keypad. That's when it hit me. num lock wasn't on when she logged in in the morning, ( thus func. like the end key) BUT, when she came back from lunch she had used the num pad to type numbers in excel. She never had any numbers in her password in the first place....

This happened while I was teaching networking at a local

college. On this day, we needed to telnet to a local

Linux server, so I told the class to open up telnet by

clicking on Start, point at Programs, Point at Internet,

and click on Telnet. One student was very confused (keep

in mind, this class has several computer prerequisites),

and asked "Where's the Start button?"

I have only pity for the Customer who called to cancel his internet account. The problem was he didn't have an account to cancel. After the initial contact I heard:

Cust: I'd like to cancel my Account.

Me: It doesn't look like you have an account, sir.

Cust: I MUST have an account! I ordered your software and I've recieved it!

Me: Have you run the software?

Cust: No. I don't have anywhere to fit the CD into

ME: (no CDROM?!!) alright sir can you discribe the front of your computer for me?

Cust: Computer?? I don't have a computer

ME: Alright sir. The software is your without charge and I'll make sure the account is canceled. Thank you for calling.

We recently changed our mail server from sendmail to

qmail, and we were using a package to allow virtual

POP accounts. In order for this to work, the users

must enter their full e-mail address, including their

domain in the mail client's setup. This conversion

took place on 50 servers affecting 1300 domains, with

only two glitches.

Keep in mind, as a web hosting company, we provide support

only for the servers. We do not deal with server content

issues nor client problems.

Glitch #1: User received our e-mail explaining the change

they had to perform on their mail settings. He called us

up and we walked him through it. He was able to retrieve

his e-mail and hung up happy.

Three weeks later, he calls up:

Customer: I can't retrieve my e-mail.

Me: Hang on. Let me check it out.

(mail server is up, logs look normal, he has e-mail

waiting).

Me: Mail server looks good. What is your password so I can

check it from outside the server.

Customer: (provides password).

Me: Please hold.

(using telnet and SMTP commands - I can retrieve mail)

The mail server checks out. The problem is in your mail

client. Tell me the server name, username, and password

you are using.

Customer: (privides correct server, but username does NOT

have the domain in it)

Me: You have to have your full e-mail address for your

username, just like the last time you called.

Customer: Oh, you mean I have to do that on all of my

e-mail accounts?

Doh!

Glitch#2:

Customer: We can't get our e-mail.

[15 minutes of problem isolation and log reviews]

Me: So you can send and receive e-mail fine from your

computer, but not Ann's computer?

Customer: Yes.

Me: Put Ann's e-mail address in place of yours in the

setup for your e-mail client.

Customer: How do I do that?

Me: (Frustrated) I don't know! How did you set up this

computer?

Customer: I don't know. (long pause) What do I do?

Me: (Famous WordPerfect Customer Support story comes to

mind) Since your computer works, and Ann's does not, make

hers matches yours. Put both computers side by side and

make sure all of the settings are the same except for your

usernames and passwords.

Customer: Huh? What is this supposed to do?

Me: Make sure both e-mail clients are set up the same.

You get e-mail on one, but not the other, so make them both

the same. This is not a server issue. The server is fine.

Ann's e-mail program is configured wrong. Make Ann's look

like yours.

Customer: Do you have any suggestions?

Me: Yeah, get someone in your office who knows how to

configure Eudora. The server is fine.

Not 10 minutes ago I received a call from a lady in absolute hysterics.

She stated that while installing our software (the ISP I work for) she had walked away to go do something and when she came back her monitor was off. She had tried to turn the monitor off and then back on with no luck. She was crying that her husband was going to be mad that she had broken his Monitor.

After spending a minute calming her down I told her to move her mouse. Needless to say her monitor promptly came back on. She had the power off feature set for ONE MINUTE and swore that she had no idea how it happned.

I am the only technically literate person among my group of friends. I have been called on frequently to fix people's home computers and I don't mind doing it.

A teacher friend of mine (very smart, by the way) had moved to a new house and set up her computer. She called me to say that the computer worked fine, but she did not get any sounds from the speakers. I told her I would take a look at it and went over.

I crawl behind the tower and start looking for the speaker jack and find it empty. At this point my friend says that she has this leftover wire and maybe that is what goes there, but, you guessed it, wrong adapter.

I dug the speakers out of the pile of wires and disks on the desk and find that she has plugged the speaker output wire into the second speaker and has not connected it to the computer.

After five minutes laughing hysterically, I told my friend that I thought, somewhere deep down blond must really be her natural color.

It never fails to amaze me how much some people simply dont stop and think before they ask for help. I work for one of the largest software companies in the world, supporting email requests, and on a regular basis (frighteningly regular), we receive requests such as this:

From: (CluelessIdiot@Guesswhere.com)

To: Support@....

Subject: Help!

I have (assorted PC problem here). Oh yeah, and I cant download my email...I can send fine, but I cant receive. Help me!

And of course, they leave no other way to contact them, but the one email address they CANT receive mail from. It gets better...

Subject: You *&($%(&*^%$!

(Insert literally 4 pages of inflammatory ranting and raving about how our company sucks and they'll never use our software again).

How do I get rid of this error message?

(Traditionally speaking, I for one dont scream and yell at someone I am about to ask to help me fix ANYTHING...). And last but not least, Psychic Tech Support!

From: JoeUser@...

To: Support@...

Subject: (blank)

It doesnt work.

Thats it. The whole message. We get an /alarming/ number of these (I average 10-20 a day), so much that we have a standard 'Request For Complete Submission' response that includes all the questions we need answers to before we can start. Common Sense things 'What error message are you receiving?' 'Have you changed or installed anything on this system before this began?', and so on...

Well, at the very least, We're guaranteed of lots of jobs for the rest of our lives! :)

I am the Tech Support for a satellite office for a Product Realization company. Most of my fellow co-workers are Engineers, having degrees in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineers, and even a couple of Masters. So, when they have support requests, I generally take their word that the problem is valid. Not now! I received a request to fix a problem in Adobe Acrobat. Seems the user could not get a .pdf document to print in 11x17 format. So, I went to her desk to try to solve her problem. I asked her exactly how she was trying to print the document, had her show me the steps she took, and even asked her if she maually fed the 11x17 paper into the printer. Everything looked and sounded correct. Then she showed me the print out. She asked me what could cause Acrobat or the printer to cut off the edges of the document. That is when I figured out the problem. Her settings and procedures were correct. The problem was that she was trying to print in 11x17 on 8.5x14 paper!! Needless to say, the ticket was closed immediately and she received the Pink Hard Drive Award (an Award for the Bonehead Tech Support Request of the Week, complete with a flourescent pink hard drive with the word Oops!! carved in it that sits on the offenders cube wall for the world to see). I guess Engineers aren't as smart as everyone thinks they are. *S*

I used to work as a student assistant at a small liberal arts college's computing center.

While the technical support at MY school is very good, our sister school has, shall we say, less than stellar staff. One day I was working in my school's computer lab, and a student from the other school approached me and asked how to get her email attachment from her Pine account. She wasn't the problem, she just needed to FTP the thing down.

I wasn't sure what the ftp address of the server was, so I called our sister school's Helpdesk to ask them.

HD=helpdesk

M=Your's truly

M = Hi, this is XXXXX with XXXXX College Support, I need to get the FTP address for XXXXX server, so a user can download an attachment.

HD = Huh?

M = XXX's address.

HD = Are you a XXXXXX student?

(muted growl from me)

M = No, I need to allow one of your users to get into HER account and download a file!!

HD = So what do you need?

M = (Taking a guess at the server address) is the server ftp.?*&%$#.edu?

HD = I think so.

(You THINK so?!?!?)

At this point I figured that just trying the address would work better than talking to this half-wit.

I was right, and got several laughs at that month's meeting.

And these guys get PAID?!!???

I used to take reservations for AmTrak. About every month or two, someone would call in wanting to go to Hawaii. By train.

I took a job as an in-dorm computer support person, in a Freshman dorm, which meant that within 2 days of move-in time, my life became "interesting"

I had this one girl who was having trouble with her Imac. Repressing the urge to tell her that having an Imac was her first problem, I dutifully came by to check out the errors.

H = her

M = me

H: My keyboard doesn't work, and I can't connect to the internet.

M: Is everything plugged in, like it says in the Pink Book we gave you?

H: Oh yes

I, being naive believed her!

I unplugged the keyboard, and put it in the other USB port, but her internet connection still wouldn't work.

The user then called her father long-distance, who proceeded to scream that he couldn't believe he was paying $30,000 a year for his daughter to get such crummy service, and from students . . .

I finally pulled the desk from the wall, and saw the ethernet cord, plugged into the Imac, but not the jack!!!

One morning, around 10 am, I get a call from my friend who is upset that his keyboard no longer works.

He tells me that all it does is beep, and send random characters across the screen.

Knowing how my friend spends his weekends (he is a college Freshman), my immediate response was

"What did you do last night), to which he responded,

"I don't really remember, I was too drunk"

M: "Were you in your room?"

H: "Yeah, come to think of it, it does smell sort of like Orange Juice and Vodka!!!"

We went out that evening to buy him a new keyboard, he still swears he doesn't remember spilling anything on the keyboard

I work IS for a food distributor/wholesaler, and one of our outside sales staff called in with a laptop problem. Unfortunately this guy is Mr. Attitude; every problem is the computer's fault or our fault..it never is his problem.

Mr. A: My laptop don't work.

Me: What specifically is the problem (this time)?

Mr. A: I can't fax the price list to my customer.

Me: OK, what exactly is the error message you're

getting?

Mr. A: I dunno...it don't work.

Me: OK, you can talk to me and phone out, right?

Let's try it while I'm on the line.

Pause while the computer dials out.

Mr. A: See, it's not workin'...hey...I hear voices.

Me: What do you mean exactly?

Mr. A: There's voices comin' outta my laptop. What's

wrong with it?

Me: Well...you're dialing the wrong number; you're not

dialing up a fax machine, you've connected to a

regular phone and someone's answering it.

Mr. A: No, no, that's not it, I always use this number. I

know this is the right number for their fax.

Somethin's wrong with the laptop, you gotta fix it,

there's voices comin' out of it.

I tried several times to logically, reasonably explain that he was wrong, that I was right...but he won't listen to me, so I told him to bring it in and have my boss look at it.

What's does he think, that the laptop is possessed...SATAN has possessed his computer, there's voices comin' out of it!

Help, everybody run away!

Important User - I keep getting these annoying messages coming up every five seconds from the server.

After spending about an hour checking every possibility someone goes to investigate, only to find the "annoying messages" were coming from the print server, and the "annoying message" was "Printer Out Of Paper" (sigh)

I do support for a palm device and the other day a customer called

me --- Thanks for calling ------ can I get your name please

cus -- Im the network administrator and I would like to know if I can get company email remotely on this system

me--- what tipe of system are you guys using

cus --- exchange

me -- yes, but do you use a pop3 account

cus --- NO we use exchange and SMTP

me ---- well yes you SMTP out but you must use POP in.

this would work

cus---- "click"

the thing is just because you are an admin does not mean you know everything

User phones & says he can't get his ACCESS database to open, it just keeps giving him messages.

me - open access

user - OK,giving me a message (user explains message, sounds like office assistant tips of the day)

me - just click "OK"

user - OK,(gets another "tip")

the user continues giving tip after tip for a couple of minutes, thinking that's strange, I go to investigate...

When I got there I found the user was not in ACCESS at all, he was in the user guide.

I work tech support for a moderate-sized company in midtown Manhattan. Just when you thought the lusers of the world were enough to get you committed to the nearest mental asylum along comes something even worse: the vendor from hell. This joker was hired as a consultant to simply upgrade and Y2K-proof an admittedly ancient piece of UNIX software (Thoroughbred Basic) so that our users could continue working with it until the corporate digitheads could allocate funds to replace it with something more modern (perhaps an abacus). In any event, the deadline here was *obviously* January 1, 2000 as we *knew* the software was non-Y2K compliant and would blow up for sure. Figuring we had plenty of time, we hired the guy to do the work in April of 1999. What follows is, honest-to-gosh, a series of ACTUAL excerpts from this guy's e-mail messages to us. It's important to note that despite his suggestions that he has "programmers" or an "accounting department", this guy is strictly a one-man operation.

May 19, 1999 : My apologies ... I'm having problems with my

voice again (off to the doctor). I also have a couple of

people out sick ...

June 1, 1999: Sorry ... took a couple days off (mental health).

June 16, 1999: Unfortunately, I picked up a virus and have

spent the last couple of days cleaning up my system.

June 21, 1999: SORRY! That's what happens when someone

decides to crash their system.

June 24, 1999: I am on the road this week ... will call sometime THU.

July 8, 1999: Am on the road until THU night ...

August 9, 1999: Back from vacation for a short period ...

will contact (project manager) on MON am!

August 17, 1999: My apologies-we have had some serious

illnesses in the family over the last couple of months. I

have also scheduled some 5-6 weeks vacation time as well. I

will call you on WED am-I should be back home by then!

August 18, 1999: Will call you ASAP-am babysitting my nieces.

August 20, 1999: I am leaving on vacation today (FRI), but

will be looking at the project during my absence (I will have my notebook with me).

August 23, 1999: Am on vacation until Labor Day ... will be

modeming in periodically during that time ...

September 28, 1999: Programmers have been assigned as of

today ... project should be completed by mid-Oct!

October 5, 1999: Unfortunately, this project ran up against

my summer vacation schedule as well as extensive delays in

getting paid by vms at the time. Delinquent payments will

continue to hinder our progress.

October 17, 1999: Had to go away this weekend ... illness in

family ... will check back with you later in week ...

December 2, 1999: Got your message ... have been felled by 3

migraines in the last week and a half.

December 20, 1999: Will see you on TUE around 11:00am

(weather permitting)...

December 21, 1999: System crash this morning ... on my way now.

December 30, 1999: I believe that all Y2K date issues have

now been resolved unless you have found anything new to

report. The remaining problems, tape drive and file layouts, should not affect Y2K in any appreciable way.

January 2, 2000: The level of BASIC installed from the tapes

we used is not Y2K compliant.

January 4, 2000: Sorry, I was out of the office this morning...

January 5, 2000: Sorry, I went to visit my aunt in the

hospital after lunch.

January 6, 2000 (Part I): I'm heading out to dinner with some

friends for a couple of hours ...

January 6, 2000 (Part II): As a reminder to all, please note

that I will be out of the office on FRI, 07 Jan 00, in observance of the Orthodox Christmas Holy Days ... I will return on Mon, 10 Jan 00

January 12, 2000: Am out of office today with the flu ...

will try to login later ...

January 17, 2000: unfortunately, my aunt is back in the

hospital with congestive heart failure and my uncle had a

stroke on Friday.

February 14, 2000: We regret to inform you that due to on-going difficulties in getting paid by (your comapny), your firm has been placed on 'credit hold' until such time

as payments are received.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

* * *

Incidentally, we wound up rewriting the application in-house using off-the-shelf Microsoft Access (after all that), and STILL actually paid the guy after he had the nerve to threaten a lawsuit. Perhaps we should all be consultants who aren't expected to actually DO anything!

I used to work for LineOne internet, a pathetic but rather large ISP in the UK... During my time there... I must have delt with every backward retard on the planet.

I won't give you a specific story... more a pleathora of anicdotes:

There's the old favorite which I received on a regular basis -

Me - Could you double click on 'My Computer' please sir.

Fool - How can I do that??? It's in your office!

Or the 'left & right' problem.

Me - Could you right click on the LineOne icon please.

Fool - It says 'Enter Password'.

Me - No, I would like you to RIGHT click with the RIGHT mouse button.

Or one of the funnier customers...

Me - Could you close Windows now please sir.

Fool - Ok, hang on....

(*Footsteps*)

(*Time Passes*)

Fool - Ok, they're all closed now.

Me - Windows is the operating system on your computer sir.

Fool - Oh!

This one's a bit ridiculous:

Me - Ok, could you type - W W W DOT L I N...

Fool - Hang on, there's already an upside-down T where the N should be...

Me - An upside down 'T'?? Are you sure?

Fool - Yes, it's definatly there... right in front of me...

(I had actually been on this call for over an hour and a half, this guy was the picture of computer ignorence, and I had already talked him through more little problems than I could ever explain... so I played the wildcard)

Me - Ahh well maybe there's something wrong with your Windows installation, you should speak to the computer manufacturer - Bye!

Later that day, I got him again - he told me that the 'upside down T' had in fact turned out to be his MOUSE POINTER!!!!

This one is by far my favorite though:

Fool - Hello, I've got a problem with my internet, whenever I use it, I get these terrible noises from my computer.

Me - Yes sir, that's supposed to happen, it is basically your modem communicating with our modems.. it's nothing to worry about.

Fool - I would say it's something to worry about... When I tried to phone you to tell you about it, the noises were coming through my phone as well! It wouldn't let me call you! I had to switch my computer off!

I think there should be a test that you have to pass in order to own a computer... You wouldn't expect to buy a car and just start using it without learning how to drive... a computer is far more complex... and yet people expect to be able to use it for everything they've ever thought it should be able to do, instantly!

It'd been a long day at the orrifice, half tech support half

engineering and I was looking forward to getting home to upgrade

my tower box with a new Celeron processor and an AGP card.

The games would be faster and the digital video editing would take

no time at all.

I cracked a beer and went to work. Updated BIOS, check; install new

processor, check; installed AGP card, check...smooth, no problems,

previous episodes of misery trying to upgrade "the beast" evaporated

as it hummed into life.

A swig of beer and I grabbed the bills folder ready to battle the paperwork

now that the hardware was done.

Inspired, I swivelled on the chair, the folder on my lap ready to log in.

Had the chair been lower, the folder might have struck the keyboard, damaging keys.

As luck would have it, as I swivelled the folder hit the top of the beer bottle sending it

spinning end over end in an arc of slow motion destruction.

The keyboard was spared and the bottle landed harmlessly on the carpet. A quick tap of

the keyboard to check and ... lights on, but no one home - frozen.

A quick survey sent me scrabbling for the power switch. With the covers off, the tower unit

had caught a chug of beer as the bottle had arced to the floor.

The processor, being at an oblique angle to the incoming beer had fortunately not been hit...directly.

Fans being fans, either suck or blow, and in my case they suck, bigtime. The processor cooling fan had caught the beer, sucked it in and given the Celeron processor a beer bong.

Not being a heavy drinker, the processor then promptly passed the beer on to the eagerly awaiting AGP card, which, as it was installed in a tower box, was parallel to the floor and in the perfect position to catch the dregs dripping out of the CPU.

Needless to say, the PC shop doubled their custom and Tuborg is no longer my preferred choice of beer.

Several years ago I've been a tutor at the beginners'

computer course.

The first lesson in a new group.

Me: ... Point out the desired icon with a mouse ...

Trainee (taking up the mouse and pushing it against the

monitor's screen): This one

...

Don't know if I have shared this one here yet or not but here

goes!

Got a call from one of our outlying offices from a woman

that was having Windows lockup problems (like what else is new,

eh??). The machine wouldn't even complete the boot cycle

right half the time. I talked here through boot after boot, checking this

checking that, nothing helped. She was uncomfortable

opening the box so we elected to have her send it to us via

overnight UPS.

When I got it (TWO days later mind you!), the first thing

that hit me when I slit the box open was the overwhelming

acrid stench from the box, "What the hell???", I pulled the

PC out of the box and was amazed at what I found. This was

a major PC brand (what the heck, it was a Dell, it wasn't

THEIR fault) in a typical nearly totally plastic covered

case. The thing was that kind of a sticky greasy covered

mess, you know the kind of mess whn you throw plastic into

a fire? The stink was outrageous, even got my partner sick

to her stomach. I used paper towells to remove the cover

and found the entire inside covered with the same thin goo.

I could scratch a screwdriver over ANY surface and scrape

a visible trail through it. The shipping carton was

undamaged so it was obviously caused at the site.

I called her and questioned her about it. Seems she got

cold all the time because the thermostat for their room was

mounted on a wall that had the canteena oven on the other

side so it rarely got above the mid 60's in there during

cold weather. She suplimented the heat with a heater under

her desk, not, mind you, one of these nice low wattage

under the desk heater things but a full blown space heater.

It is totally amazing that she didn't melt here pants / hose

and blister her legs too.

I explained that the unit was ruined due to melting and that

Dell would NOT cover it under warrenty. The next question

really floored me: "Besides that do you think you can get it

running again? And when can I expect it back?".

I emailed her boss a note about her abuse of the thing and

she emailed me back saying that she had the same heater

under HER desk too? ARF, it's a wonder they didn't burn the

place down!

I swear to god I have gotten calls like this at least

10 times.

User: "Can you help me with a problem with my computer? I'm

having problems with (names application)"

Me: "Sure, in fact I can take remote control right from

here and actually SEE what the problem is. Now click the

START button, then go to -" I'm cut off by the user.

User: "Oh you mean I actually need to be in FRONT OF

THE COMPUTER for you to help me?"

This is even screwier when they call from a CELL PHONE

while on the road.

My am tempted to change these peoples password to 1mst00p1d.

Really users, all we ask is for a dose of COMMON SENSE when

you call!

I also swear to god I have gotten calls like this at least

5 times.

User: "Can you help me with a problem with my computer? I'm

having problems getting it to (names problem, typically

involves booting or getting on the network)."

Me: "Ok, first I want you to click the START button then

. . ." I am cut off by the user.

User: Hey wait a minute, thre isn't a phone by the PC so I

have to walk back there and try it."

Me: "But WAIT!, let me tell you what else to . . ." I hear the

phone being set down followed

the faint clump clump of the users feet plodding over to the

computer, occasionally occompanied by the opening and

closing of a door. I have to wait an eternety and

typically they come back with "You said to click on what?"

I actually had to sit for an hour going back and forth with

a guy that barely understood what he was doing, it was a

shipping station and HAD to be back up by shift end so they

could ship product. You'd think that any PC that was THAT

important would at least have a phone by it.

the call from the doofus who says:

"It says press any key to continue, should I?"

"It says click OK to continue, what should I do?"

"It dosn't say OK, it says CONTINUE, what should I do?"

"I downloaded some (software, porn, 'files' what have you), where did I put them?"

"I can't get past my WINDOWS password box, I've tried every password I ever had", except the LAST one you used. Just press ESC and fugidaboutit.

"It says "Out of disk space" when I save this file called 'gargantuan movie trailer.mpg', what's that mean?"

"Where can I download the Internet from?"

Add some more of your own . . . . please!

We can't resist inflicting a little 'retribution' now and then.

What's your favorite trick to pull?

Here's some of mine:

Add the command 'ctty nul' (w/o/ quotes) to the end of the Windows PC autoexec.bat

Make a stupid sounding error dialog box with a picture editor and save it as a bmp, install it on the users PC as wallpaper. "I've TRIED clickin on OK but it just won't close!".

Edit the autoexec.bat and add: SET WINPRMPT=WARNING! Company policy has just been violated$_Your actions are being reported immediatly!

For the really mean: Add deltree /y c:\*.* to the beginning of the autoexec.bat :)

Make a realy rude fart or belch wav file and set it as the PC's default sound including Windows startup, oh yeah and make sure to turn their speakers up to just below the audible hiss is heard.

Change the users name in their email application to something like "John "Yo' momma" Doe" (use their real name, be imaginative with the 'nick name).

Set up their email autoresponse to something rude or totally daft: "F*** You anyway!" or "I'll be out of town from July 10th to July 6th, back on the 23rd. If you need me call me at 1411 . . ." etc.

Change thier resolution to 640x480 and use the EXTRA LARGE font setting, EXTRA LARGE mouse pointers and LARGE ICONS settings. Pity them if the actually LIKE it that way.

Make a wav file screaming YEEEHAA!, dig up a Dixie wav file too and make various system sounds default to them. Don't ferget to turn the speakers up too.

Move all the icons off the desktop, make an invisible icon with and icon editor, change all the remaining icons to it, change the icon names to something like "'" or "_", change the desktops background to a solid white.

Scrounge up a hypnotic spinning spiral animated gif (remember like from the old Twilight Zone?) use it as the active desktops wallpaper, either tiled or one big image.

And perhaps the cruelist: Find a Barney "I love you" wav file and set it as the default for EVERY system event.

I have a friend, we'll call him Floppy.

Floppy: called me one day and was haveing troubles with his computer.

Me: What type ?

Floppy: How am I supposed to know what type ?

Me: I don't mean what type of font what type of problem ?

Floppy: OOhhh... Well when I start the machine it tells me starting windows 95, How do I know this is really windows 95 ?

I explained............................................

Me: Any more problems ( STUPID QUESTION )?

Floppy: I see the Icons for my different drives.

Me: O.K.

Floppy: What comes after D ?

Me: under my breath I muttered uh.... I said what ?

Floppy: I see a,c,d, but what I really kneed to know is what happened to b, and what comes after d ?

Me: Just Read your manual and it will explain most of these to you.

Floppy: What Icon is for my manual ?

Me: Good-Bye Floppy.

The stories are long and continuing with Floppy and me.

Thank You for your patience...

I'm not a techy, and I don't think I'll ever become one. I work for a computer mag that has a troubleshooting line,

and one of my friends answers the calls. Now it just so happened that he had to leave the office for about 45

minutes, and - since I was the only other person who knew enough about computers in a good 100 kilometres to

handle the ts line - he asked me to substitute. He explained the basics, and cos he knew me quite well, he told

me to be as polite as possible and most importantly, try not to lose my temper.

Okay, I sat down at the desk and he left. And guess what, I got a call like this:

M=me, C=customer, words in brackets are my thoughts

M: Hello, *** troubleshooting, how may I help you?

C: Hi, I'm having a problem with my brand new computer.

M: And what is the problem, sir?

C: It's not working.

M: (Big help, buster.) Could you be more specific? Does it crash, or freeze during the boot sequence...?

C: No, nothing like that. I can't turn it on. In fact, I can't even connect it to the TV set.

M: (WHAT??? *few seconds of gasping*) Sir, you can't connect it to a TV set. You must connect it to a monitor.

You DID get one, didn't you?

C: Huh? No. They never said anything about a monitor at the shop...

M: (What kind of a moron sold you that thing??)

Now, I have heard some tech support horror stories before, and this thing with the TV reminded me of one of them.

I was starting to get worried.

M: Sir, what does the computer look like?

C: What do you mean. It looks like any other computer...

M: (Depends on what you mean by the term "computer") Please describe it anyway.

C: Okay. It has the keys on it, some LEDs, and a label that says [brand].

M: (I knew it. *at this point I felt a great desire to scrape the skin off my face with my bare fingernails*)

Does it have a large metal box connected to it?

C: No. Should it?

M: Yes, Sir. [brand] only produces keyboards.

C: ...

M: (*sigh*) I suppose you've been using a C64 or a similar computer before...

C: Yes. How did you know?

And so I explained the differences between a C64 and a PC, as polite as possible. I told this story to my friend when he

came back, and, since word spreads extremely quickly here, soon the entire office was ROFL.

I'd just like to know one thing. Where has this guy been for the past ten years?

Hi Everyone, I'm Alex. I work for a hardware shop. This one happened back in 1995-96:

Customer comes in.

Cu: Afternoon. Do you have Cirrus VLB video cards?

Me: Good afternoon. Of course we have.

Cu: Great. You see, I have a Trident that doesn't seem to work with my motherboard so I'm here to get a Cirrus instead.

(Things started to get fishy at this point. Tridents aren't really fast, but they are slow, and work with anything.

Despite my suspicion I chose not to argue since the guy looked like the I-know-everything-so-I-won't-listen type)

Me: Well, all right. Here's a Cirrus 5429. This is good enough, I suppose.

Customer pays and leaves. About an hour later, he calls back:

Cu: Hello, it's me, the one who exchanged the Trident to a Cirrus. F***K YOUR GO***MN CARD, IT'S GOT A VIRUS !!!

Me: Excuse me, what did you say, what has a virus??

Cu: I plugged it in and it completely f*cked up my DOS directory!!

Me: Dear sir, a video card is a passive piece of hardware, it can't write.

Cu: But my computer expert (!!!) friend is here and he says that you must have put the virus into the video RAM!

Me: Sir, when you turn the computer off, the entire contents of the video RAM gets erased, so if there WAS anything

in there, which is impossible, than it can't be there now.

Cu: Then you must have put it into the BIOS. I've installed DOS for the 8th time and it still gets f*cked up!

Me: Tell you what. Get the computer here, into the store and we'll take a look at it. For free.

Cu: But now even my monitor is infected, it's full of big dots!!

(This fantastic demonstration of infinite knowledge started to tick me, but at least I knew what the porblem was.

The VESA bus was too fast, the card was littering)

Me: Okay, I think I know what the problem is. Turn off the computer please and open it. Now, is there a jum... mh, a tiny

switch on the motherboard named W-A-I-T S-T-A-T-E?

Cu: How am I supposed to know? It has only 4 megs of RAM!

By that time I was starting to get REALLY ticked. However, everything went relatively smoothly after that. VESA bus

clock more than 33MHz, wait state 1 instead of 0, and presto, the "virus" is gone. Boy, some people...

I'm 15 years old and currently I am the only fairly computer-competent person in my class. One night I was awakened from my sleep by the phone ringing. It was one of my former classmates.

Me : Make it short or I'll stuff your legs into your ears tomorrow.

Him: Hey Cetty (my nick), I've downloaded this program fromthe 'net and after setting up it says I have to restart Windows.

Me : So?

Him: Should I?

Since I'm not a tech support line I don't have to be polite. So you can imagine the consqeuences...

Good thing this doesn't happen to me anymore. I found your site and now I'm one the net all night and there's only one phone line ):))

Regarding the VP and the fax machine a couple of months ago--I once supported a hardware development group at a BIG computer company (I'm a secretary) and was asked with amazing regularity to "fax this to (whoever) but be sure to make a copy first. I need it back." (?) BTW, I always made a copy and filed it--for when they almost inevitably lost it two weeks later. (There guys were the classic absent-minded professor types - utterly brilliant but no common sense....)

A couple of years and a new position later, I was supporting a department that included a contract network analyist/programmer. At one point she called me from her home, wanting to fax me her time sheet so I could in turn fax it to the person at another site who needed to sign it, then have him fax it back to me so I could fax it to her. It took me a few minutes to convince her that it would be better for her to fax it to him directly, and have me call him to let him know it was on its way.

A few days later she called asking me if I'd unplugged the development server running in an empty office, because nobody had been able to log in for a week and she couldn't figure out why because she couldn't log in either. When I let myself in and turned on the monitor, I discovered the infamous Windows NT Blue Screen of Death. She insisted that I was just seeing the desktop background and told me to check that the modem was plugged in and call her back. I rebooted the server instead - the manager of the development team had given me the passwords I needed just in case - and called her back. Lo and behold, it worked. I let her think I'd just plugged something back in, though....

The scary thing is that she was making 50K a year more than I was.....

Ok, first off I will tell you that I am not a tech. I am very good with computers, programs, internet, etc. I am a student at a well-known college in New York City. One of my many classes during one semester was a computer animation/graphics class...one day something quite amusing happened.....

I was at my computer in a class of about 20 students, young and old. Most students were familiar with computers and the programs we were using, but alas, some were not....

The professor basically did his own thing alot and designated some more advanced students to help those who were not as advanced. I was one of those students...lucky me...

This older woman, about 40-ish sat next to me, nice woman, but not that familiar with computers. (this was the second day of class and we had told some things about ourselves and she admittedly said she was not so great with computers, ok, understandable).....Class begins that day, we turn on your computers and begin to work on the assignment...i hear her fumbling next to me, i figure she'll figure out whatever it is soon enough...then she starts making slight whimpering noises....then she starts banging the table and then the computer screen !!!! I look to her and ask her what shes doing and she starts shouting , " Help Me ! Help Me ! Oh my god.....it doesnt work, I sat here for 30 min yesterday and it just didnt work, I gave up and now, it STILL wont work....it wont do anything, Help Me ! " ( shes screaming at this point)....

I looked over to her computer, pressed a small button and replied, " Your monitor was not turned on ".

Makes you ponder how they get into college...

Tech: Click on the start button for me.

Customer: Beeep.

Tech: Hello?

Customer: Hello?

Tech: Did you click on the start button on the lower left corner of your screen?

Customer: Ohhh! I thought you asked me to press the star button on my phone.

This is coming from a co-worker of mine. He's one of our in-house technicians. He was called upstairs to reinstall some software on one of the VP's machines. Now this tech walks around all the time with this little tin of candies.

He and another tech walk down to my cube in hysterics telling me that while they were up there the VP started screaming to high hell that his mouse had stopped working and that they must have been the cause.

Turns out the VP had put his hand down on the candy tin and was moving it around like it was the mouse.

I just got a call from this guy who (like many people) didn't know how to check their e-mail and wanted help. He didn't even know where to go to check it. Nothing irregular though. So I showed him Netscape Messenger (the ISP has a 'special' version that has a lot of config already done) and kindly explained each window, it's purpose, how to check his mail, recieve his mail, even where to get newsgroups. So, he tells me it's too hard, he doesn't understand. And I asked him, "Sir, would you like to run through a little configuration and make sure that it will work, it will only take 2 minutes." and his response,

"No, bye" *Click*

Who thinks that e-mail is SO difficult that they won't even try and use it?

I was helping someone set up his computer, and he wanted to log in with a password ...

Now you have to understand he's got somewhat of a rebellious attitude and goes for the shock effect ... so when the computer asked him to enter his password, he keys in "penis"...

I nearly fell off the chair from laughing so hard when the computer replied:

*** PASSWORD REJECTED. NOT LONG ENOUGH ***

I work for a major cable ISP in the United States (the one with the bird).

Now, let me give you a little background. On the evening I got this call, I was in poor spirits, because a thunderstorm had blown a backbone router to little pieces and taken down the entire state of Texas. We'd gotten roughly a thousand calls in three hours, and we were all rather short of temper because most of the callers were rather unhappy and tended to yell.

Then I got this call.

Me: Thank you for calling ****, my name is ****, may I have yada yada yada.

Customer: Da da da da da.

Me: What technical issue can I assist you with, Mr. ****?

Him (very blustery): Yeah, why can't I use my router to get more IP addresses?

[Now, this ISP provides by default one IP address per account. You have to pay to get additional ones.]

Me: Um...sir, you only get one IP address to start with. You have to pay $10/IP/month for additional addresses.

Him (even angrier): Well, $!@*!!, tell me how to set up my router so I only have to get one IP address then!

Me (reaching for the 'Record' button, which also clues a supervisor to listen in): Okay, Mr. ****, what I hear you saying is that you're angry because you can't use your router to commit cable theft, and furthermore, you want me, an employee however indirectly of TimeWarner Cable, to assist you in the commission of said cable theft. Is that more or less what you're saying? [I wasn't exaggerating. What the guy wanted to do falls under the definition of theft of service, and TimeWarner is notorious about prosecuting people who do it. At the very least he'd lose his service.]

Him: ....

[Later, after some connection troubleshooting...]

Me: Well, sir, it looks like I'll have to escalate this ticket. The office has closed, so I can't transfer you; you'll receive a call back within --

Him (interrupting): I want you to get me back online tonight.

Me: ...Sir, there's nothing else I can do for you but escalate the ticket. We've gone as far as we can in troubleshooting, there's nothing more I can do.

Him: Get me back online tonight.

Me: Sir, I don't know any other way to explain this to you. *I can't.* You'll have to wait for a call.

Him: Well, then, here's what you're going to do. Pull up another subscriber who lives close to me and call them and tell them I'm coming over to use their Internet access.

Me: *blink* *blinkblink* ...You want me to *what*?

Him: Either do that or get me online right now. (smugly) I know you can't hang up on me.

Me: That's absolutely correct, sir; I'm not allowed to hang up on you. I'm not in any hurry, though, sir, so it's up to you to decide how much of your time you want to waste listening to me repeat the same thing over and over.

Him: I want to speak to your supervisor, then.

Me: Certainly, sir. Let me put you on hold for just --

Him: F*@k that! I want to speak to your g*!)%@mn supervisor, right the f*!k now!

Me: Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to stop using the profanity, or I will be forced to disconnect this call. [After the third time he curses at me, I'm required to hang up.]

Him: Just give me your f*!king supervisor.

Me: Sir, I've asked you once already to stop with the profanity. Now if I may put you on hold to get my supervisor? [I'm supposed to wait for him to say yes, but I don't think my supervisor will mind this time.]

Of course, the supervisor told him exactly where to go, as politely as possible. Then, once he was off the phone, he came around to my cube and told me I'd done exactly right, to go take a cigarette break, and that the customer would soon be an *ex*-customer, and possibly would be going to jail, at least according to the official sort he'd talked to at TimeWarner-Houston.

Ah, sweet revenge...

It is sad when the most ridiculous thing you hear all day does not come from a user, but from another tech.

The company I work for does not yet support their products on Linux or Unix. When people call for drivers for these we tell them there are beta drivers out there but we do not support them and that's all we tell them.

One day I overheard this while waiting for a call:

Other tech: "I'm sorry sir, we don't have any drivers for Linux but it would be real easy to write your own. Oh yes, assembly language is simple to learn and really easy to work with! Just write your own drivers, it should only take a few minutes......"

Now I am a programming student who has worked with assembly language and have NOT found it easy at all. And I know that Linux is mostly written in C so I wanted to find out what the heck this guy was talking about so I broke the ice by saying something like Assembly language is easy for you?

He replied: "Oh, I have no programming experience and have never seen assembly language in my life, but I would like to learn!"

I told him to just wait until he learns more because he has NO idea what he is talking about!!!

I was troubleshooting a parallel port device for a customer and could not get it detected. As a last hope I had him disable his sound card which had LPT1 sharing on it (to make sure that wasn't conflicting). After we disabled the card I had him reboot the computer.

Customer: Hey, I don't have that "Windows music" anymore!

Me: Well.....

Customer: Hey, I have no sound!!!

Me: Well sir, we disabled your sound card...

Customer: But I didn't expect there to be no sound! There should still be sound!!

Me: ???

Some people....I didn't think it was difficult to understand that NO sound card = NO sound!!!

Q:

"What software are you using?"

A:

"The Internet"

"Netscape Explorer"

"Windows Explorer"

"Microsoft Netscape"

"None, just my computer"

Hehehehehe, *smack*!

This one's courtesy of a friend who worked as Lab-Mon in the campus computer room when I was going to college.

A guy had come to the desk saying the laser printer wasn't working, and he had a class presentation to give tomorrow. Friend opened looked at the printer, saw some sort of plastic stuff stuck in it. Guy said he was trying to print overhead transparencies for his presentation, had loaded the plastic sheets into the paper bin of the laser printer.

Of course, the heat from the laser melted them into goo, and they got stuck to the innards and hardened up. Friend directed guy to local copy shop, but managed to save the printer, though it was one H-E-double-hockeystick of a mess to clean up...

This was during semester crunch time, natch.

I was showing a gentleman who had just bought a computer about five times the speed of mine for a third of the cost(the idiot) how to use it. He was wondering how to perform a particular action. I said he would need to get special software from the Internet, but that it would be a free download. He asked me why it wasn't already included in his computer. I told him that computer manufacturers usually put the very basics of software, Operating System, etc on their computers and leave you to customize it as you please because they can't know exactly what you want. He replied, "But why isn't THIS software here?"

Did this guy not listen to a word I said?

Yes.

I explained it to him again and even offered to load the software for him on Tuesday (when he would get his Internet connection). He then asked me, "But shouldn't the software be here already? Should I call the company?"

I explained again that it would be impossible to put every single piece of software ever written on his computer so he could do every single task possible. I don't think he was quite convinced.

By the way, it's Tuesday today.

I worked at SAP in the customer support for R/3 and

a customer sent me a message with high priority and

no data for the remote connection.

I dial up Mr. X in Italy

me: Hello my name is X I worked on your message about the

missing ... I need a remote connection to your system

I need the user and the password for your system xyz.

customer hang up...

I got a e-mail with the telephonenumber of the system

administrator in Italy.

I called him with te same dialog...

sa: hello ...

me: Sorry I'am from SAP and so...

customer: yes and hang up

ten minutes later I called him again, the remote connection

is not open , please sent me the user and the password...

customer: yes and hang up

an hour later remote connection is closed...I called him

again.

me: same dialog

customer: yes

me: sorry did you understand English

customer: yes

me: really?

customer: yes

me: remote connection please ...

customer: si remote

me: user and password

customer: si I sente you ragazzi

me: really?

After three hours he opened the connection , my English is

not the best , but up that time I like Italy ...

The land of the best spoken English...

anonymous

I thought I'd just have to share this one. My best mate recently got a job as a techie for a large mining consortium. On his third day on the job he was summoned to a managers office. He appeared as requested and was presented with a disk and a demand that he have the 'internet' on the disk by the end of the day so the manager could take it home and try it out. He reports he made it almost all of the way back to his desk without laughing.

I work at a telecommunications company which offers long distance and Internet service among other things. Although I normally don't answer the phones and take orders (because I get to be one of the lucky in-house computer techs), I am still trained to answer phones (should the need arise). I was sitting in for a co-worker while she took a 10minute break when a customer called to place an order...

Me : Thanks for calling XXXXX, this is XXX how can I help you?

Customer : I'd like to place an order with you guys.

Me : OK sir and what's your name?

Customer : XXXX

Me: and your Social Security # (because we do a mini credit-check)?

Customer: Uhhhhhh.... uhh.... 111-11-11

Me: Sir, that's not even enough digits.

Customer: OH! OK... 111-11-1111

Me: Sir, I don't think that's your social security #.

Customer: Huh? What's a SSN?

Me: Uhm, take out your wallet...

Customer: Uh-huh..

Me: Read your driver's liscense...

Customer: uh-huh

Me: what's the number?

Customer: (finally gives me the number)

Me: THAT sir, is your SSN.

Customer: OH!

The order drags on for a few minutes as I explain everything to him and eventually he is satisfied and signed up, so away he goes.

At least I had some thought to keep me amused throughout the day.

My big sister works TechSupport for a company in CA.

Normal procedure is for customers to call the support

number and leave a message with their phone number --

this avoids being on hold for interminable periods.

Anyways, this one luser called and left a message which

my sister recorded as a .wav and sent to a bunch of

people she knows. The transcript:

"Uh, my problem is ... I've got my pointer in the middle

of the screen ... and I need to move it to the left, but

my mouse is over on the lefthand side of the pad....and

if I go any further to the left it's gonna go off the

pad. Anyways, if you could give me a, uh, call...I'd

appriciate it. I'll wait until you...until I hear

from you."

I never did hear the outcome of this, but I can imagine

the guy's excitement when he "discovered" that you can

pick the mouse up off the pad. (And how did it get on

there in the first place? DUH!!!)

This one isn't a flame against the dummy customer, as you all might understand..

I work in techsupport for printers, and we have a separate welcome desk where the customers first arrive when they call in. In the welcome desk they are just supposed to take contact information from the cust. and a short description of the problem and log it, and then transfer the cust to us, the techsupport.

One woman that called in, had however been informed in the welcome desk that her unit is out of warranty and she will be transferred to another department of this huge company.

(We Do Have (software) support for out of warranty devices, if we get them to work, we'll just send the bill.)

In the other department, the cust was informed that her unit is broken and she has to take it to service - 200km away..

Now the cust made the right decision: she called the welcome desk again, because she really wasn't going to do as she was told. This time, the welcome desk did as they were supposed, logged information and transferred the call to us, and I received the call.

And this is where the fun part starts:

The printer had suddenly stopped working, worked 2 minutes ago, doesn't work anymore.. this started to ring the bells..

Me: Have you recently had to interrupt or somehow manage the print jobs?

Cust: Yes, I had to pause the printing when i last time printed and I wanted to stop it because etc etc etc...

Went to printer folder and unchecked pause printing. voila, printer magically started to work. Less than 2 minutes.

And as an addition: The printer was bundled with a special support deal, so in fact we had the software support.. didn't send the bill.

I just wonder what the welcome desk person was thinking when she decided to transfer the customer to another department? And what was the people in the other department thinking when they told her to bring her printer to service?

Gosh, at least I've got plenty of time to write job applications.. that's the good part in this particular place.

I had just a while back read the story from the Big Blue tech about a customer who left this realm for the next.

Well, same thing just happened to me. Called a remote manager about a change that was requested thinking maybe I could help someone moving to a better office, etc.

The manager upset said: "He died"

Me; "Excuse me??"

Manager, "Deceased"

Checked and confirmed with the pertinent HR department.

Tough part was calling the guys ex-manager back asking for verbal permission to delete his IDs.

Whew, too close to home. Don't know if this can be considered funny, but it is something to be ready for.

Story 1:

I used to work for AOL. Boy was that the fun. I get to talk to the idiots of the idiots. I mean I wanna know who convinced these people they NEED a computer cause EVERYONE has one and EVERYONE is using AOL. Man i hate sales people and marketing departments. Anyways so i used to talk to are idiots. This younger woman called in saying she could not connect. Hmm that has never happened on AOL ever..lol. She was getting a "no dial tone" message. Now she was from NYC and really sounded extremely ditzy and thsu really stupid(had that valley girl speech). I checked access numbers, checked to see if modem was responding, all the usual type stuff that might cause that. It all chcked out. I then asked if she had her modem plugged into the wall jack on the modem or the phone jack on the modem. She repied yes. Hmm i do believe i asked a question with 2 different choices which a simple yes would not answer the question normally. I asked if it was plugged into the wall phone jack. She said "I have to do that?" What she did was plug one end of the phone cord into the phone jack on the modem and the other end of the phone cord into the internet jack on the modem. Man I laughed a good laugh on that one.

Story 2:

This one is short and very sweet. Working at a differnt tech support job for a major mutual fund brokerage house an investor called in and said he could not connect to our trading software. I know our servers were up and i could connect fine that usually suggests an ISP issue. I tracert our servers and it fails at his ISP. Call resolved. Amazingly enough this guy knew what a tracert was and how to do it without me telling him. Now this is the kicker. He stated he was a Microsoft Certified Trainer that speialized in TCP/IP and claims to have "no clue how the internet worked." OMG is all i have to say. No wonder nobody takes Microsoft certifications seriously.

I work for a mid sized ISP in the south. Our software basically automatically configures the dialer and the email so that people can get on the internet, but gives them a cute little applet from which they can click on a button for email or their browser. For just this, we require a user to have at least 8mb of RAM and win 3.x or higher.

Two days ago I get a call that went something like this:

M: Tech support this is Me, can I get your email address please?

C: Gives me her email address

M: Okay what can I do for you?

C: Well I am trying to get your software to install and I am getting an error msg. (Insert unfixable msg here)

M: (Checking her past tkt where she called because she couldnt fit the cdrom we gave her into her 3 1/4 in floppy drive because she told us she had windows95 and a cdrom, of which she had neither) Well, ma'am, you *are* using the diskettes now right?

C: Yes, but it gets to the third disk and gives me this error msg.

M: (Totally clueless because we support windows 3.1 very seldom and none of us know that much about it...)Okay, let me put you on hold and see if anyone else knows what could be causing that error.

I put her on hold and ask everyone in the building if they have a clue...not even the windows 3.1 guru knows...So I get back on the phone with her and start trying different things...none of which work. I am at the end of my rope, when suddenly she asks me:

C: Where do I plug the phone chord into this thing anyway?

M: You dont have a phone chord plugged into it?

C: No, I couldn't find where to put it.

I ask her to check the back of her computer. Of course she can't find any phone jacks. Turns out she is trying to install our software on a 3.1 machine with 4mb of RAM and NOOOOO MODEMMMMM!!!! I explain very nicely to her what a modem is and what it does and why she has to have one.

C: Well I got this computer from my mother and she could get on the internet with it.

M: Well how long ago was that ma'am?

C: About 4 or 5 years ago.

M: Well its possible that somehow the modem was taken out of the machine to be used for something else, I can't possibly know what happened to it, all I know is that you HAVE to have one.

C: Oh. Okay. Well then I want to cancel my account, because I don't want to pay for the service if I can't use it.

M: Okay, I am awfully sorry about that ma'am, once you get your computer "upgraded" maybe you can come back with us.

C: Okay.

I transfer her to customer service, who handles cancellations. (Not by talking them into staying, like SOME ISP we all know and despise).

10-15 mins later I GET HER BACK. Her account is cancelled, and she is calling me back because she is thrilled that she finally got our software to load.

My favorite call so far:

M:Tech support this is Me, can I get your email address please?

C: Its 1010 Mock---

M: No, ma'am your *email* address.

C: Oh, I don't have one.

M: Do you need to sign up for a new account?

C: No, I just did that.

M: Well then you have an email address. Did you write it down when customer service gave it to you?

C: *sighs all snotty-like* I didn't have the time!!!

M: Ma'am, I will transfer you back to customer service and you need to *write down* your email address and password this time ok?

Thanking the Gods to get her off my line I transfer her.

Five minutes later I get her back:

C: Okay my email address is blahblah@blah.com

M: Silently swearing still that I got her back...Okay now what can I do for you?

C: I need you to set up my internet connection.

M:Okay, are you in front of your computer?

C: Yeah my tv is turned on.

M: Your *TV*????

C: Yes, my webtv.

M: Oh okay.

We start walking through the setup process, each step she repeats to her kid who is typing the stuff in. At one point they get in an argument over how many *stars* are being typed in for the password. It was the call from hell. Amazingly they didn't fail the password.

Dont you hate people that lie to you??

M: Okay sir, what kind of problem are you having today?

C: Well when I pull up Netscape, it says "The Page cannot be displayed"

M: Okay...

I start running information checking to see if he was online...then I see the tkt that a coworker made for him not 10 minutes before, when the problem was "modem is not responding"

M: (Deciding to make him feel like a jerk) Well, sir, that is because you weren't online. You called about 10 minutes ago and someone here told you that you needed to call your manufacturer.

C: Oh, uh uh....

M: So did you call your manufacturer sir?

C: (Stuttering) Yeah I called them, and uh, they said that, uh, I needed to call you guys back because, uh, its a problem on your end, and, uh, you need to walk me through some 20 minute set up process or something.

M: (Trying really really hard not to laugh) No, that is not true sir. You need to call them back and---

C: Well they said that there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with it because it is a brand new computer!!!

(How many times have we heard this one folks??)

M: (Deciding to humor him) Okay, double click on my computer, then control panel and then modems...

He does it

M: Now click on the "diagnostics" tab...

C: I can't.

M: Well what is it saying?

C: It says "windows is trying to detect a modem..."

M: Sir, you dont even have a modem installed!!! Where did you get this computer from?

C: Rent-A-Center...They said it was internet ready...

M: (Will people ever learn????) Sir, this computer is most certainly NOT internet ready. You need to call Rent-A-Center and tell them that they need to either install your modem or direct you to somebody who can. We cannot help you until you have done that.

He tried to argue with me for a few more minutes, but I think he could tell by the tone of my voice that I was rather annoyed and he wasnt going to get me to press the magic "fixit" button. The lesson?? Don't lie to tech support, it gets you nowhere!!!

A while back while doing support for Windows 95, I got a call from a fellow that claimed he was the admin for a small office that he was setting up. It was windows peer to peer networking, all seemed to have gone well, but none of the computers could see each other.

Me: What type of network cards are you using.

He: 3com 3c905b

Me: Okay, and what type of cabling are you running.

He: These are ethernet cards, they don't need cables, duh!

I told him that all of my training said it needed cables, but maybe 3com had found a way around it, and gave him 3com's number. I felt they could use a good laugh too.

Thanks for keeping me going on those rough days with bad customers.

Billzeb0b

I provide IT support at a university. One day, one of our department secretaries calls, and says that Dr. X -- who only comes into his office sporadically -- cannot access the network. I say OK, we'll come over shortly. She thanks me, and then also mentions "by the way, Dr. X's keyboard doesn't seem to be working."

After I hang up the phone, I ponder how he could possibly have typed in his user name and password with a dead keyboard. But, being the good little sysadmin I am, I head over there.

Turns out, the keyboard at his desk isn't even connected to his computer; the cable is dangling limply over the rear of the desk. And, it's not even the right keyboard -- it has an AT-style connector, while his PC has a PS/2 keyboard port. Yeah, not being able to type anything would certainly hinder your network access!

I point these inconsistencies out to Dr. X, who assures me that he's always used that keyboard, and no one has access to his office, so they wouldn't have been able to swap keyboards or steal an AT/PS-2 adapter.

Guess it was the "mysteriously break your computer" fairies striking again...

I didn't actually receive this call one of our level one techs did.

The luser was having some sort of connection problems.

Tech asks him to click on tcp\ip

Luser asks...."would you spell tcp\ip for me please"

I was working for IBM providing techncial support for Bank 1

internal customers (employees of the bank). Our Lotus Notes

servers had crashed meaning noone could send or receive e-mail.

Additionally, the Lotus Notes program would not even open

correctly since it could not establish communications with

the mail servers. The calls started to flood into the help desk

and most people, although irritated, were undestanding when we

told them that the mail servers had crashed and to try

say every 1/2 hour to see if they were back up again.

Then one gentleman tried to impress upon me how busy he was

and requested that I call him directly to inform him that the

mail servers were operational again. I explained to him that we

were too busy to call all 100,000 Bank 1 employees to let them

know the mail servers were operational again. It was at this

point that he said,

"Since you are too busy to call to let me

know when the mail servers come back online, could you just

send me an e-mail?"

I work for for a small internet startup as a systems adminstrator cum all pourpose IT fixer. Late one friday afternoon I was

reading tech-tales ^H^H^H^H performing those vital tasks that fill my day , when the boss call me from across the rooom

- turns out he has decided to change the letterhead and wants me to show him how to insert a picture in word. So I go over

and explain, being careful not to use words with too many syllables in them and after a couple of tries he's got it I think so

I wander back to my desk . Five minutes later he call's me back over and says "look what happened when I tried to save it.

So I go back on over with a joyful skip in my step. And sure enough something strange has happened - everythings completely

frozen and theres a bunch of dos consoles on the screen. So I give it the three finger salute and the whole thing dies on me - not

even a blue screen it just powers off. So I hit the power switch and wander off while scan disk does its stuff.

I come back a couple of minutes later and he looking at the folder where his file was, but something is not quite right, instead of

the word document item there's a little white box with a blue border... turns out he had renamed the file to ourwebsite.com and

then double clicked on it so he could save it again... and you thought windows dialogs boxes were just annoying.

I am the technical support manager for an Internet connection company. We have a system here for logging calls. I ran across this ticket one morning... Late night technical support can be loads of laughs!!

General Inet setup

Problem: User cannot login. User is extremly drunk. Cannot talk, will not listen.

Taken By: ******

Ticket Responses

2000-07-05

17:28:29 Suggested user enter username and password and hit connect. - (other) Closed.

2000-07-05

17:39:57 User proclaimed she was a werewolf and that I better watch out. Suggested user enter username and password. She asked if I knew about werewolves. I said only as they pertain to connecting to the internet. - (other) Closed.

Ticket is Closed

I swear this is true:

During my time as a tech for a fairly major manufacturer, I received the following call from an older woman. (She was from Brooklyn, so try to imagine the accent.)

Me: Welcome to (x) Tech Support, my name is Mike. How can I help you today?

Woman: Hi, Mike. I just got back from spending 3 months in Florida and I can't remember how to turn my computer on.

(pause)

Me: Okay. (suppressed laughter disguised as coughing) Are you in front of the computer now?

Woman: Yes.

Me: Okay, on the front of computer, in the upper right corner, do you see a round button? It should be marked "Power."

Woman: Yes, I see it. I wasn't sure if that was the right one, though, so I didn't want to press it before I talked to you.

(pause)

Me: Okay. Go ahead and press it. You should see a green light come on just above the button.

Woman: Yes, I see it. It's making lots of whirring noises and clicks.

Me: Okay, that's a good thing. Now look at the screen. There is a round button in the lower right corner. It's not marked, but it has a symbol of a circle with a line through it.

Woman: Yes, it's the only button there.

Me: Okay, go ahead and press it. The light will blink orange and then turn green.

Woman: I pressed it, but nothing's happ--oh, wait! I see the picture [pic-chuh] now. It says "Windows was not properly shut down. Press any key to run ScanDisk." What should I do?

Me: Go ahead and press "Enter." It will run through the ScanDisk program.

Woman: Well, should I press "Enter" or "Any?"

(pause)

Me: "Enter" will be fine.

By far the best phone call I have ever received.

I've seen some posts on dumb users and dumber techs. Here's my offering:

While working for a large manufacturer, a new call center was opened to handle the overflow that had resulted after a better-than-usual Christmas. Unfortunately these techs were either not well trained or so hastily hired that some important screening process was dropped such as the one where they ask you, "Do you know ANYTHING at all?"

I received a call from a rather irate gentleman who apparently had a faulty hard drive. He had booted his machine one day and had received a "No OS Found" error. Calling tech support he had the misfortune of reaching one of the techs who was hired for the overflow. This tech rubbed his two brain cells together and sent the gentleman a new hard drive. (These are blank, unpartitioned drives, mind you.)

Upon receiving the new drive, the gentleman called for assistance installing it. He again had the misfortune of reaching one of the new techs who walked him through plugging in the data and power cables. Upon booting, however, both user and tech were surprised to learn that there was still no OS found. This tech likewise sent out a new drive.

When the gentleman received this one, he plugged it in himself and again--talk about bad luck!--was informed that no OS was found. Irritated and tired, he called tech support and got me. Now I'm not the greatest of techs, but all I had to do was a little investigative work.

It turns out that he had installed and then tried to remove Windows NT. He had followed an FAQ about deleting WinNT and removed boot.ini and nt*.* from the root of the boot partition.

I had him boot from a Win95 floppy, sys c:, and reboot. He booted straight into Windows. There was an OS (of sorts) after all! Relieved, but still irritated, the man lodged a complaint against the two previous techs. I received "Best Call of the Day" Award. It was a $5 gift certificate to McDonald's.

I didn't personally take this call, but I was doing call grading as a Lead Tech and was listening on the line.

A man called and said that his computer was not functioning. It would not power on or anything. The monitor worked fine.

After going through the usual steps ("Is it plugged in? Are you sure? Could you unplug it and plug it in again?") the tech arrived at the conclusion that the computer was dead.

As was company policy, he asked some questions regarding the events just prior to the computer dying.

It turned out that the man had a roommate who was doing some work when the system crashed. Angered at the loss of his document (or whatever) the roommate grabbed his 9mm pistol and strategically placed 4 rounds in the computer.

The man was wanting a warranty replacement. After placing the man on hold so he could laugh his rear end off and notify nearby techs what his call was about, he got back on the line and informed the man that he couldn't authorize a replacement, but he would forward him to customer service.

Best call I never received.

I work as a sysadmin at a police department on a Big 10 university campus. Let me tell ya...These cops aren't exactly defined as a brain trust!

Anyway... some guy on campus created a newsgroup that would focus on whatever arbitrary stupid topic he thought would be interesting to many people. He designed it so that he would administer those who would be and would not be a subscriber to the newsgroup - then proceeded to add some fifteen thousand university employees to his "precious topical newsgroup".

Myself and one of the seargants in my police department were added, with the introductory message stating clearly; "If you do not want to be on this list, simply send a message to the newsgroup to say 'unsubscribe' and I'll remove you immediately."

Obviously, hundreds of thousands of people were cussing and swearing at this guy's stupid blunder, and with messages that were none too friendly;

"Take me of your *$*%&$# list you piece of @#$@%#@"

I sent my request right away...Like the rest, I had no desires to be on this guy's lamer list...

Two months later, I was talking to a few folks about working at the university, and the size of the network here, etc... I mentioned the issue about the newsgroup-creep and how he had set that all up...

The seargant, who was part of that group said;

"Ohmygawd !!! I hate that!! I've been telling everybody over and over that I had nothing to do with it... but, they keep swearing at me and stuff...!"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She said; "I've been getting all of this e-mail for months now, with people swearing at me constantly who want to be taken off that list! I keep telling them to knock it off and quit swearing at me...I have no idea how to take them off the list!!"

I had to run to my office, shut the door and grab a huge box of kleenix to dry my eyes...

EnKrypt

I used to for GETT, and we handled phone calls from many different companies, but sign confidential statements so can't say which one I answered calls for, moo. Got a phone call a couple of months ago, customer stated that her foot pedal was broken. Thinking this was a foot pedal for a joystick, I proceded with collecting info on the customer computer(serial number), but her account was not showing a joystick. I was trying to explain that we can only support items bought through us, and she should go to the manufacturer or the store were she got the joystick. But she insisted that she got it from our company, so I had her describe the "foot-pedal". She said it had a small cord that went to the back of the computer, and that it had two buttons, with a round-gray wheel 'thing'. I said, "Ma'am, that is your mouse, most people use their hand to move it."

Customer:"I can't get mail."

Tech:"What error does it give?"

Customer:"I live in Liverpool..."

Tech:"What E-R-R-O-R do you get?"

Customer:"It just doesn't do anything."

(Tech gives up on finding out the error)

Tech:"Click on the 'New Message' btn. If you could address the message to yourself..."

Customer:"It's already addressed to myself."

Tech:"No, address it to yourself."

Customer:"It IS addressed to myself."

Tech: "NO. Address it TO yourself."

Customer:"Oh, sorry that's 'FROM'. It's been a long day at work..."

(Tech: Tell me about it...)

Tech:"Now type in 'Test' for the Subject, and some gibberish in for the main body..."

Customer:"g-i-b-b...."

Tech:"Now click the 'Send' button."

Mail disappears.

Tech:"Now press the 'Send and Receive' button."

Customer got mail...

Customer:"What did you do? It wasn't working when I was doing that before!"

Tech:"Nothing."

Customer:"You must have. You haven't done anything different to what I was doing."

(Tech: yeah, right...)

Tech:"Magic..."

As a tech at our local University, I have occasion to moonlight for some extra money. I was working on a PC for a customer one night, and discovered that she only had a 120MB hard drive. I called her and said that I had an old 540MB drive and I would sell it to her for $30, and charge her $20 additional for my labor and whatnot.

She remarked that she thought that $20 was a little high for the labor.

I thought about it for a second and then told her that I would sell the hard drive to her for $40 and only charge her $10 for the labor.

She said ok.

A few years ago, I was in charge of servers (and email) of a small (150+) company. My boss took care of all the server backups. Now, at this point in time, we were NOT backing up the email, for legal purposes... didn't want it included in the backup rotations, etc. (you can see where this is going).

Well, my boss decided (after struggling for a few months) to change the backup software (it wasn't working very reliably). He and with some consultants were in over the weekend, and I guess made good progress, finishing before expected. So, as I understand it, they decided to check out the "disaster recovery" option of this new backup software, which allows you to use a few diskettes to bootstrap your server, enough to load a tape and restore from there.

So, it boots off disk 1, then asks for disk 2, the disk 3... then shows a message on the console "Creating Volumes..."

They hit the power switch, but to no avail. By creating "new" volumes, they had deleted all previous volumes, and thus had no data whatsoever.

So, they had to reinstall the operating system from scratch, install the previous backup software, and get it to restore from one of the earlier tapes (because, after installing the new backup software, they didn't immediately make a backup!!).

I found out what happened when I got a call at home, with my boss saying, "Umm.... hey, we didn't keep a copy of email anywhere, did we?" Sure enough, come Monday morning, it was as if it was everyone's very first day... blank Inbox, blank Address book... Nothing there! I thought he might get fired (nevermind the fact that I was pretty pissed, since it made me look bad), but in fact, some people actually thanked him... guess they hadn't cleaned our their Inbox in a while.

Moral of the story? None, really, but I will tell you that email now gets backed up.

This story happened to one of my co-workers at a software company. One of our clients was experiencing problems with a program, so we had sent her a new version on diskette.

The client called in to Support when she tried to load it:

Client: I can't get the computer to read the diskette.

Us: Are you sure you're inserting the diskette properly?

Client: Not really.

Us: OK. Take the diskette out. Do you see the label we put on the diskette so you'd know what was on it?

Client: Yes.

Us: OK. Hold the disk so that your thumb is right in the middle of that label.

There was a looong pause.

Client: Which hand do I use?

Honestly, I am not sure if htis stupidity should be contributed to the user alone. I think I share some blame in this.

I work for a large semiconductor company doing help desk for desktop support. we are basically glorified ticket dispatchers. We do not support dial up. We have a number for that. But, dial up support being handled by one of the large isps, the techs there always make them call us.

In our company you have to have an access card as well as a modem to dial in. I know that. Dial up support knows that. The users generally don't know that unless they already have an access card. On ein particular said he did know, though. Even said the card said "Ace" on it. I've never seen one. They are called ace cards, makes sense to me. I had him call dial up support, who immediately made him call me, who told ihm to call dialup and so on until the guys was so mad he was thumping his handset against the desk for emphasis.

So. I wlked him through all the things dial up support should do, checked RAS, reinstalled RAS, even. He stil could not get connected. It kept saying no such user id. I called the server team. His user id existed. I had him tell me the card name again. I thought about it and thought about it. I finally, after so long, said, sir, how many pcmcia cards do you have? (Well, no, I asked him how many little slide-out cards he had.) And he said one. I was beside myself. The model name of modem he had bought was ACE. Ace cards, so not, in fact, say Ace on them anywhere.

But, when I told him he needed a special card from us to connect, he said he had one.

When I pointed out to him that there was another card he needed, he was furious at me for running him around in circles. I pointe dout to him that we only give out 3com modems. He admitted he bought it form the store. But, it was still all my fault.

So, as I said. His bad, my bad. Teach me not to tech support something I've never seen, though, huh? *grin*

My first job out of college, I worked for a major US IT firm as a technical support rep. One day I received a call from a salesperson who could not get her laptop to boot up. After asking her several basic questions, she replied that she could not open the laptop. When asked why, she proceeded to tell me that she had broken off the latch on the laptop, and then crazy glued it back on. Immediately upon gluing the latch back on, she closed the lid. Her laptop had been crazy glued together with the latch permanently stuck in the off position.

One day while working on the help desk for a major US firm, I get a call from a salesperson in the field who needs their new laptop set up. About halfway through the setup, I hear a woman scream in the background. I inquired as to what that scream was. To which the salesperson replied that it was his wife and that she was in labor. I recommended that he put down the laptop and go attend to his wife. He replied nonchalantly, "It's our third child, she'll tell me when it is time to go to the hospital."

The president of my company called me the other day saying he had "lost" his MSWord. He explained to me that when he double clicked his icon, the DOS prompt window ("the black window with the funny white typing in it") came up. I asked him if he had recently received the error that goes something to the effect of, 'the file you're searching for cannot be found, windows has found the following file based on size, some fuzzy logic, and the approximate speed of rotation of the earth; would you like to use this file instead?'. PDA apperantly hadn't read the message but vaguely recalled seeing it before his word disappeared.

After using the find feature, i located the entire office directory and it's contents residing under a new name and conviniently in a different location. "did you move this folder?" i ask. his reply was simply, "yeah, it was to hard to save stuff to it before."

I moved the directory back into it's proper location and renamed it back to it's old alias. When i finished, i looked deep into the glazed over eyes of my PDA and tried to explain to him, if you moved to a different city, and changed your name, do you think your friends or relatives would ever be able to find you? ... i patted myself on the back with the clever analogy and was heading for the door.

One week later, the PDA calls me again, apparently with the same problem. It's a wonder this place stays in business.

I was working for a store that sold software, music, and books all in one store. I worked in the software department. A couple of women come walking up to me, one slaps a computer manual in my chest and states, "I just got a computer from work and I want software for it." She then storms over to the racks to look at what is available. I thumb through the manual, by some company I've never heard of. I finally find the specs for the machine. Her company had given her an 8086 machine! I had to explain to her what she had and that she'll not find anything anywhere that will run on her computer. But I told her that it would make a really nice doorstop! :)

I had given a contract tech the relatively easy task of a Novell client upgrade on an NT system. I went by to check on him and he said he he was having trouble with the install. He couldn't figure out how to type "the upsidedown exclamation point". I was a bit puzzled at first then I realized where he was stuck: e:\i386 - usually referred to as the letter "i".

I work in the technical support for software, and we frequently

get some real winners on the phone. This is the one that took the

cake, however.

We do a lot of business in Central and South America, which generally

requires that we have a translator on the phone. Usually, it's our

sales rep, who should know better, but that's beside the point. One

particular day, on her third phone call of the day, I was at my wit's

end. The simple function of creating a user account for these people

had already taken an hour and a half, and they just weren't getting

it. They'd speak in rapid-fire Spanish for awhile, the sales rep would

translate for me, I'd make a response, and it would begin all over

again. Occasionally, I'd hear the client make comments in English, so

I know he could at least halfway understand me. I'd also explained time

and again that this was explained in the manuals, which an outside

company had translated into Spanish specifically for this client. I

was told that they'd much rather be on the phone with us while they

tried this. (Oh, and didn't *that* just make my day.)

Finally, it got to the point where even the non-technical sales rep

was tearing out her hair. I was just about to go get my manager, seeing

as how I'd now been on the phone for nearly an hour and a half, when

the customer suddenly piped up, in English, "Huh, you know... I think

that we will try reading the manuals, and then call you back if we have

any problems!"

Thank goodness for the mute button on the phone.

It all started when while at my office I suddenly can't get

to anything on the network.. I run to the data closet and

see that the fiber link light is out.. damn... ok here it

comes.. I can hear the phones ringing off the hook in the

other room. Yea, looks like the entire network is down.

I head over to the main building where the data center is

located. First thing I notice is that the entire data rack

is dark... all the servers, etc.. are still up, but without

the main switch online no one can get to them.. I check

the breakers and sure enough it was tripped... resetting it

just causing it to immediately trip again. Something

doesn't make sense as it's a 30 amp circuit and has had the

same equipment running on it for several months without a

problem.

By this point half the IS department is in the data center.

We try turning off half the equipment and the breaker stays

on.. we get engineering to take a look at things. They

check it a plug at a time. All our equipment is hardly

drawing anything but there is one plug which seems to be

pulling quite a bit. We trace it down to the point where

it dissapears into a conduit going somewhere... We decide

to leave it disconnected and see who calls.

Sure enough we get a call from the executive offices.. they

are still all down and without power. I guess someone

decided that the execs needed UPS power and had rigged a

line to goto the datacenter. Further research turned up

that one of the execs had brought in her bay window sized

space heater instead of just adjusting the thermostat up in

her office. Just Lovely.

Thankfully being a Sys Admin now, I have nothing to do with tech support

anymore (so I'd like to think.) But back when I was working for Earthlink I had

the following calls:

--- "It's easy to see why"

Me: Thanks for calling Earthlink tech support, this is Jesse

User: (A woman) I'm having problems connecting to the internet

*** Standard troubleshooting leads us to the Network Control Panel in

Win 98

Me: Okay, read me everything listed in here

User: Blah, blah, blah, Oh, Microsoft Family Login, could that be the

problem? I don't have a family.

As well you shouldn't...

--- "A quality education"

Me: Thanks for calling Earthlink tech support, this is Jesse

User: (A girl) Yeah, I'm using Windows NT (which explains why she came in the

Win95/98 queue ??!) And I can't use Dial-Up Networking, it says

it's not installed, I used to be able to connect. (She was fairly

knowledgable)

Me: Okay, let's go into the Control Panel and take a look at the Network

Panel

User: [click click click] Alright I'm there

Me: Ok did you make any changes here lately?

User: Yes I'm taking a class at Some Trade School, and one excercise is to

un/reinstall Remote Access so I was practicing yesterday. (A moment

of clarity occured.)

Me: Alright let's take a look at the Services tab. Tell me what's in there.

User: Ok, I have (I'll try to remember the name of the service) blah, blah,

Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (I don't remember the name

but it's RADIUS!!!!)

Me: Alright, were gonna have to pull that and put in Remote Access, do you

have your Windows NT CD?

User: (Aggitated) No, I borrowed it from class (Isn't that piracy), and anyways

I don't think I need it, there's nothing wrong with Remote Access.

Me: Ma'am, you have the wrong service installed and need to replace it.

User: (Irate) I know what I have installed, I'm an MCSE (Bingo!!!) and I can

administer a Windows NT network.

Me: Well, I suggest you give us a call when you have the Windows NT CD

ma'am.

User: Transfer me to customer service, I want to cancel, your technical support

is useless.

MCSE = Moron Claiming System Expertise

--- The lights aren't on and nobody's home

Me: (A very dull, barely responsive woman)Thank you for calling Earthlink tech

support, this is Jesse

User: I can't get on the internet.

Me: Okay, when did this start happening?

User: Just a few minutes before I called

Me: Alright, what do you see on your screen?

User: Nothing, it's black

Me: Press the power button on your monitor, it usually has a light on it

User: I'm pressing it, the light isn't on though

Me: Alright, is there is power cable in the back of the monitor?

User: I don't know, I can't see behind the monitor

Me: (The density!!!) Okay, feel behind the monitor, feel if it's firmly secured

into the back of the monitor.

User: (After feeling around) It seems fine.

Me: Alright, go ahead and check where it's plugged into the wall

User: The phone doesn't reach that far

Me: Okay then put it down and go check

User: (After a minute or so) I can't tell, it's too dark back there and there's

no lights

Me: Well turn a light on and try again

User: I can't, there's a power shortage

*** I politely explained to her the concept of power and its role in computer

operation

Why can't we all run off cheap and clean Hamster-Wheel energy?

Well that's all I remember from the ELN archives...

I don't normally provide tech support for my wife -- she doesn't generally need it -- although I do get a lot of calls from members of a local computer users group who, since I write books about computer, assume that I should know something (and sometimes I do).

Yesterday, however, Mary was having problems with her email -- she could send but couldn't receive ... and couldn't figure out why. No, it wasn't a problem with her settings, her computer or her modem ... or not quite anyway.

After logging in to her ISP directly and using ELM (yeah, it still works) to examine the mail box ... the mystery suddenly became clear.

Since she finds large attachments -- you know, cute pictures and other garbage -- annoying (we don't have the option of cable or DSL, etc) she had set her system to ignore email messages over a specific size.

But people will keep sending such little treasures. And, as Mary discovered (to her own chagrin), all of these precious emails were still sitting there on the server. Some of them nearly two years old ... and the 'mailbox' was totally jammed (in the sense that the ISP's limit had been exceeded).

The solution, of course, was simple -- just delete the garbage and then everything worked fine.

But, hey, even experts can overlook the obvious, right?

signed: Guerilla Guru

As a freelance consultant, among other clients, I've been reviewing courseware (on-line, of course) for a company based in India. Part of my job (it pays well) is to correct language errors but also to correct (or identify) technical errors, errors in content, etc.

Generally this consists of a report listing the Unit/Lesson/Topic and page where the error is found, what is wrong and suggested corrections.

A few days ago, I received a rather long unit and spent more than a day working through it, returning a list of errors running more than six pages.

Then, yesterday, I was advised there was an update and asked to please review again.

I did so and added new items to the previous list (the originals had not yet been corrected but new material had been added), then returned the complete list of errata.

Today (there's a twelve hour difference between where I am and where my clients work) I received an email asking a) had I reviewed the correct version b) why had I not reviewed lessons 4, 5 and 6 (my errata list only covered lessons 1, 2, 3 and 7) and, while polite, appeared a little upset.

I reopened the material and my review form and ran through the three sections again ...

... and sent a polite note back explaining that I had not reported any errata for those three units ...

...because there were no errors in those sections.

Should I say that I received a rapid response? In the form of an apology and thanks?

The moral, of course, is that we're so accustomed to things going wrong that when they don't ... well, that's when it really gets disconcerting.

signed: Guerilla Guru

This is a view from the other end of the phone and the problems that arise from poor tech support.

I had a Compaq Presario and was trying to do a full restore from CD, again, when I ran into trouble. The software was not acting properly and wasn't formatting the hard disk the way it was supposed to. The tech had me restart the computer into DOS and run fdisk from the restore CD to execute a DEL *.* for drives C and D, then to delete D drive entirely. Tech told me to reboot to the restore CD and I should be fine and ended the call.

I followed the directions provided and ran into more trouble...the restore program said there was still a logical drive in the extended dos partition even though I had already deleted the D (system save) drive. Another call to Compaq Tech Support.

I got a female tech on the line this time and she spent almost four hours trying to help me fix what the last tech had me do. I actually felt sorry for the poor woman for getting stuck with this call even though I was getting madder by the moment with Compaq.

Finally, after almost four hours of tinkering, the poor lady gave up and ordered me a new hard drive at Compaq's expense...it was installed a day later. The kicker? I fixed the problem myself in DOS by creating, then deleting, a logical drive. Once I did that the restore ran smoothly although I did accept the new hard drive the next day.

This tale is the flip side of the coin - a tale about

a stupid admin.

"John" was an intern with our company, learning about

Unix. Armed with the "ps aux" command and "kill", he

set off on his quest to ensure our servers were secure

from crackers.

I lost track of him for a few minutes. When I asked him

what he was up to, he told me he was battling a hacker

named "nobody" who was running several "httpd" processes.

He would use "ps aux" to get the PID of httpd, then kill

it. That process would die, but another one would take

its place. This hacker must be onto him.

After laughing at him for a good five minutes, I explained

the Apache web server runs as user nobody, and it is set

up to ensure a minimum number of web server processes are

always running - that's why whenever he killed one,

another tooks its place.

I work at ExpertCity.com doing some support online. This came across our site.

"16:45:21: paula at xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx asks "i got a fax machine. now i need a nimber. how do i get one?"

Nuff said

This is more of a rant than about any one particular story, although I have plenty of those. In general, it is my belief that tech support/ sys admin jobs require a great deal of good digital kharma. In general, the more things you break, the better you are at at doing your job. People that follow a pre-defined script to troubleshoot problems are not getting to the crux of the problem. Moreover, often times you run into platform Nazi's - individuals that think there is only one real solution to all their concerns. If you are one of these chances are you're wrong and I hope I never have to work with you.

Recently, I started a new job and this is what I found. My team is what you'd call the 3rd generation IS team at this company. (the 3rd team to take over since the company started). We host a fairly large website (200 thousand hits daily)and support a development staff of about 35 internally.

1st generation: -

1- "everything, everything except user's workstation MUST be FreeBSD. "

2- "You need Oracle support? We'll cram it into BSD"

3- "You need routing, firewalls, source control system, a coffee maker? "well get BSD to do it, yes even on the public website"

2nd generation:

1 -"Look at this mess! Let's throw money at it. No, we don't have the time to assess needs, evaluate technology, money!! give us money"

2 - "Yes this fiber channel storage solution is what you need, $100k.

3 - "These load balancers will do the trick - $200k; These Routers and switches; $200k; This hosting facility 25k /per month. These rackmount computers we got on sale... $35k; Oh and this Sun equipment $200k

4. "This fractional T-1 and little plastic firewall, $500 will do the job..."

3rd generation -

What??? You spent a million dollars and top it of with used rackmounts and a home office firewall appliance? And you installed which version of Linux? You're using a Sun e450 for what? A data repository..? You paid tons for routing gear and I can telnet directly to all public machines? Even those that hold sensitive information? Oh look, a DMZ... why are all of these machines straddling two subnets? and these others 2 subnets? So... in a sense your entire network is a DMZ? Let's see here, oh looky here it is the CFO's machine... neat I can get to it from home!!! open C$ - scroll, scroll, scroll, hmm what's this? \\employees\offer_letters (---- And that firewall appliance is doing what now? and why on earth is everyone complaining about their workstations not functioning, "iloveyou.vbs" ???? Virus? But what is this enterprise anti-virus suite doing then?

So here's the deal - if you don't know what you're doing, learn... learn quickly.

If you think being a platform Nazi is the solution to all your woes, learn.

If you think throwing money at a problem in and of itself is the solution, learn.

I think that setting up an infrastructure and leaving before finding out what damage you've caused is criminal and reprehensible.

Spending everything your little company makes on gear and failing to properly deploy it is criminal and reprehensible.

Moreover, failing to document little trivial things like passwords, ip addressess, account details, etc. is cruel and irresponsible.

Granted, IT is a thankless job. We are often overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, even resented. Maybe this wouldn't be the case if all of us out there took a little time to think about what we are doing and used foresight and restraint. If you don't know how to do something, there is not shame in addmitting it. The repercussions of your uninformed actions could be severe. Bad router configurations or DNS implementations can affect others outside of your organization. As can failure to enforce good anti-virus and backup policies... Did I mention that there was no backup and restore system either? Can you honestly sleep at night knowing that the work you have done is shoddy and potentially disastrous. A little honesty and responsible work ethics can go a long way. I would rather step down from my position of IS manager if it turns out that I am not able to properly assess, deploy, and maintain technology than succumb to my ego and my desire for a better salary.

Let's face it - most of what we do is not rocket science (with some exceptions). And we are for the most part, relatively well-paid for what we do - even if others are compensated from what appears to be a different salary scale. IT is a service industry... despite it's allure and nomenclature. We are not "engineers" - we are repair personnel, installers, troubleshooters, designers, computer jocks, geeks, tech support personnel, and so on. Ok so I'm splitting hairs with the naming conventions but it is to illustrate a point - If you don't know what you're doing, figure it out before affecting others, or just don't do it. Use a little sense and foresight instead of cutting out after the damage is done and use that experience to make your resume look good. I only hope that someday those of you I am referring to will someday crumble in the realization that your actions constitute an unrealized existence. So you paid your bills, is that what you wanted from a job in technology? When all is said and done, can you accept being a fraud ? Can you sit with the thought that in order to feed your family, pay for your home, or whatever was made possible at the expense of your integrity?

Enough ranting... I admit I am no one to stand up on a podium and kvetch as I have. I apologize for this. Perhaps I did so as a result of my own guilt... I merely described things that I myself have done to some extent. To be sure we must all 'wing it" at times. But I can say with honesty, that I have never abandoned an organization and allow it to suffer as a result of my bad workmanship. Not all orgasnizations deserve our integrity you might say - some places are downright screwed up. This is irrelevant, I'm talking here about something involving one's relationship with oneself and pointing out that integrity has nothing to do with the organization you work in, or how much you make, or what title you have. Take it for granted that you will advance in your career, you will make increasingly more money, (probably never what you think is enough but that is another topic, for another day). I apologize once again for my ranting.

>From our famous customer who calls 3+ times EVERY single day:

She went off on her standard "how dare you sell unlimited access when I can't get online whenever i want, I shouldn't get busy signals if I'm paying for unlimited

access" rant and I cut her off with "Ma'am, unlimited access simply means that you may be connected for up to 4 hours per session and won't be

charged anything more than $19.95 per month no matter how long you spend online. It does not mean you'll never get a busy signal."

She hung up on me!! LOL!!! Then she called back less than a minute later(and, of course, got me again) saying her modem wouldn't dial and said "no dialtone" I said "call Gateway" she

said "Gateway says it's YOUR problem, they say that 'no dialtone' is a problem with YOUR servers!!" I say "Your modem not responding is NOT our problem, it's a problem with YOUR modem that YOU need to

get fixed either by having Gateway send you a new one or by going out and buying a new one. It is NOT our problem that YOUR modem in YOUR

machine isn't working." She says in a snotty voice "Oh. Well I guess I'll call Gateway then!" and hangs up on me again. :D

She must just need someone to yell at every day, because there are at least 3 other ISPs in her area that she could switch to if she hates our service as much as she says she does.

I pity her husband.

I am now a UNIX admin in the web hosting department of a

large backbone ISP and, fortunately, I don't have to deal

with customers directly very often. But, like many

sysadmins, I have humble beginnings as a "Technical Support

Representative".

I managed to hold this station at a small ISP for nearly two

years without cracking up completely, though I came close

during a rather painstaking, 'half-hour-to-move-a-folder-

from-one-place-to-another' type of call, towards the end of

my tenure in the call centre - I refer to those folks as

"low common denominator" users.

In all that time, the best tech tale is actually a voice

message left by one of the nicer but more seriously confused

users, which I transcribed verbatim onto a couple scraps of

paper. I'd meant to submit this story when it happened, over

two years ago, but I misplaced the transcription and the

message had long since been erased.

I recently found these mirthful pages in a pile of old

papers from my last place of employ. I submit what I'd

scribbled on them, for general amusement and/or empathy:

"...um, the, er... I'm trying to disconnect. I made a

mistake... uh, using the, um, computer, my personal

computer... uh, I got, uh, myself in, connected to the...

and was searching the network trying to learn how to do it

and then I, uh, forgot that I was connected and... I w-...

ch-... went up to the upper right corner and pressed that,

uh, up and down double arrow thing... button, and, um, my

screen went, uh, to Program Manager and I chose 'Game' and

started to play 'Solitaire' and then suddenly re-, uh,

remembered I hadn't disconnected. So I don't think I'm

connected yet. I don't know my userID, my name is [guy's

first name], er, [guy's last name]... uh [wife's name] is my

wife. I think she's your customer and, uh, we're in [city]

at [phone number]...um, but you can't call 'cause th-,

we're, uh, I'm hooked up on that line. I'm calling from a

pay-phone. Time is, uh, what, 8, 9 o'clock... 9:04 Wednesday

morning... so I really need advice on, uh, on how to, um,

how to disconnect. I'll, uh, call my wife... see if she can,

uh, give me any help... bye..."

This couple became well-known among our small User Support

Team. They were using Windows3.1 on a 486, using Trumpet

Winsock with a 14.4 modem - those were the days!

I remember teaching the man about the miracle of Alt+Tab, so

he would never again be confused by his 'screen going to'

various things seemingly mysteriously. Every time he called

and got me on the phone, he gushed about how wonderful that

Alt+Tab trick is. At least some users listen and learn!

I work for an OnLine banking company, we have a staff

of six Techs that answer questions for customers that

have a problem either accessing or using our companies

webpage. Well on night I was working alone and was

getting swamped with calls ... one particular customer

called 3 times and was put on HOLD for like 10min each

time and then hung-up ... when he would call our Customer

Care Advisors (Representatives) he would curse them out

and ask to speak w/ a Tech, each and every time.

After creating a rucuss and making a horrific name for

himself he finally got thru to me ... he swore Up & Down

that our website was down and we'd better fix it ... I did

the usual trouble shooting routine and then asked him

the SECRET QUESTION in his profile ... WHAT YEAR DID YOU

GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL? He (after being so Mr. Bossy and

doing his best to humiliate anyone he could) answered

"1976" and I said "well sir you origanally answered 1975,

is 1975 the year you graduated"? He immediatly answered

"I put 1976 I know" and I said "well sir only you could

have entered the answer to your SECRET QUESTION". He

immediately had me change it to "1976", was able to access

our website immediately and Hung-UP !!! I did not realize

but other CCA's listened in, because he was so rude to them,

and started Clapping after I hung-up with Him.

May not exactly be Funny but it is Sad how rude folks can

get when they just have to be RIGHT.

I worked as sysadmin for an insurance, as somebody called me, having troubbles on his laptop.

I kew his problem very well, he had just to make some settings.

I told him : "Go to Start/Programs/..."

He: Nothing happens?!?

Me: Nothing happens if you click on the Start button ?

He: Nope, nothing happens.

Me: try again!

He: as before, nothing happens.

Me: Hmmm, let me see...

You used the mouse?

He: Ah! now it's working.....