Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

This comes from my mother when she used to work in the factory with sewing machines. It is not computer related but the same thing applies when a "Luser" puts his mouse on the screen, etc...

She was instructing a new worker on the operations of the sewing machine and how to create a certain garment. Well, she told her to lift the "foot" of the sewing machine and this newbie lifted her own foot!

I received a call from a customer who had just signed up for an account the day before with an ISP I support. He explained to me that he spent most of the evening and late into the night trying to connect to his new account.

He went on to explain that his ex-wife was pretty good with computers and she had stopped by to help him and they just couldnt get connected.

I went on to say how nice it was that him and his ex get along so well that she would give him a hand on setting up his internet service. (And made a comment about how my ex-serpant oops I mean wife and I are barely on speaking terms)

Well after asking the usual, does your modem dial "yes it does" do you hear our computer answer "no I don't" etc. I walked him through his DUN.

While verifying the phone number we realized it was the wrong one. he said "Thats my moms number!" And I explained that every time he tried to connect last night his computer was dialing his moms house. (By the way the DNS and everything else was configured fine)

He explained he had to go and call his mom and explain all those phone calls that went on to the wee hours of the morning.

As a teacher of Computing at a local Adult Education College, you get to hear and experience all sorts of user problems and errors. And as a lot of my friends are computer illiterate, I get the debateable pleasure of providing unpaid tech support when they have problems.

So, when a friend rang and asked advice for a new mouse, I naturally wondered what had happened to the old one, as it seemed fine the day before when I helped install a program. After a few moments of embarrassed silence, she replied in a tiny voice "Our cat ate the mouse."

Snorting in disbelief, I asked what really happened.

She replied stronger that the cat had really eaten the mouse.

Not believeing her, I went straight over and demmanded to see the remains of the mouse. Sure enough, my friend solemnly handed over a shoebox containing a badly damaged mouse, and several remains of cable.

Apparently, the cat was incensed that when people used the computer, they ignored it. So, deciding the mouse was the offending item, it used claws and teeth to chew it apart when the family was out.

After helping them purchase a new mouse, I liberated the remains of the old one and am planning a new section of my teaching classes - Pets and Computing!

I work for an ISP which uses a proprietary "Web Publisher" that is a really a dumbed-down WYSIWYG editor. We had a customer who made his own web page and sent us abusive e-mails about how it wasn't working:

Mail#1: My background is the wrong color green! It's the right color when I publish it, but I went on another computer and now it's a funky green! I want a standard green for all my clients, it's trademarked.

[We explained about different monitors, but it took several e-mails and management to step in to explain this to him]

Mail#12: How come when I clickon my e-mail address, my mail program launches with my name in the FROM box? How come you guys can't have something mail TO another person?

[We explained that's because any mail link he clicks on will have the FROM box with his name on it if he is using his own e-mail account]

Mail#31: I looked at my code using "view source" the other day, and changed some things, and they didn't save.

[This had been an ongoing thing with him explaining local vs. remote files. It took a phone call from my boss to explain why this was]

Mail#42: I uploaded my new web page, and it's all gobbledegook!

[He had decided to edit the files via notepad, like his computer friend told him to, only to find out that there was all this "funny lookin'"code in there. He deleted and moved things without a care that this would screw things up. We told him to learn HTML or stick to using our publisher.]

Mail#43: Will you teach me this HMPL?

[When we tried to show him online tutorial sites, he got real angry, and said that they didn't make sense, and to change them. We told him we didn't publish the sites. Later, we got angry mail from one of the sites that this guy had been told that we'd change the sites FOR him, and we had to sort that out.]

Later, I got promoted, and this guy eventually said he was going to go via the route of Geocities and Yahoo, and wouldn't need an ISP anymore, and cancelled the account. I wonder if he knew her needed and ISP to get to the Geocities and Yahoo sites on the Internet? Oh well...

We used to have a proprietary dial-up client a long time ago. When you first set it up, it took you through the dial-up sequence. One of the steps asked if you needed to dial a 9 to get an outside line. The next step asked if you needed to disable call waiting. Now, back then, not all the phone companies were standard with call waiting, so to disable it, most companies used *70, but some companies (and rotary phones) used 1170. Since 1170 works on both systems, we had 1170 as a default.

Now many customers thought, "Yeah, I am dialing an outside line!" and checked that option. Then they said, "Yeah, I have call waiting, too," and checked that option. So now you can imagine that when a customer dialed out, they dialed:

91170xxxxx...

But in American phone systems, especially in urban areas, when you dial "911," it doesn't matter what else you dialed (back in the BBS days, pranksters would list a BBS with the entry, "Emergency Fun BBS - Call 911-5672"), it gets you to the fire/police/ambulance hotline. The customer would hear voice at the other end, assume an error, and try again. The hotline would hear dead space, assume someone dialed the hotline and couldn't speak (like was dying, on fire, etc.), so they would trace the call and send someone to their house, expecting a murder in progress, a raging blaze, or something equally as frightening. This was especially elevated when people called multiple times. The customer would never know why 911 came by, and whatever he or she wondered about why they couldn't connect was immediately forgotten when they were told they were making phony 911 calls by some angry policemen. They would deny this, of course, because most honestly didn't know their computer setup was to blame. Much zany madcap fun ensued.

Once our company realized what was happening, an emergency rebuild was made so that *70 was the default, and dialing 9 was not.

I used to program a call center for a National ISP. I had an old Mac 540 with a Mercury modem I was trying to set up for a coworker. I knew some basic stuff about Macs and modems, but it seemed the modem would crap out somewhere in the connection process. Our Internal Help desk said, "We don't know anything about Macs, try dialing our customer hotline and select Macs from the menu prompt." I programmed that prompt, so I thought, okay, fair enough. Get a Mac expert.

I dialed the number, was on hold for a few minutes, and got this tech who right from the start pissed me off. I used to train these techs, so I knew this one was trouble. He had this patronizing and condescending voice, charged with a barking attitude that cut me off in mid sentences. I mean, I could smell "call time" on his breath. This wouldn't have been SO bad except he didn't listen to me, and wasn't getting anywhere. Finally, after a few minutes of him sighing and asking, "Are you SURE the modem is plugged in???" and I would say, "Yes, how would it dial out otherwise?" I said, "Listen, I program call centers for a living and--"

"Yes, we all are experts, aren't we? But you are the one who can't connect, isn't that right? Aren't YOU the one who called me? So who is the real expert here, hmmm? Now calm yourself while I see if there is something else we can check," and he put me on hold.

My coworker (this was on speakerphone) went, "Ohhh, I am looking this one up! He's gotta go down!" He went on the system and traced my phone number via our SQL database to the call center, the queue, and then the rep himself. We then telnetted and looked up his profile in the Aspect switch.

When he came back, he asked, "Now are we feeling better now that we had time to relax?" My God, I wanted to punch him. This guy was doing nothing for my company's reputation.

I told him I wanted to speak to his supervisor, that his attitude was uncalled for, it was rude and patronizing, he didn't know what he was doing, and worse yet, he didn't listen to the customer. He started this "W-well, you are the one who doesn't know what they are doing, but if you insist, I will send mail to my supervisor and he will tell you the SAME thing, I will take down your number and have them call you back tomorrow--"

I said, "Nope. I know that way out, but you aren't as anonymous as you think. Your name is [Mike Smith] rep # 54132 out of our Texas call center. Your supervisor is [John Doe] at extension #5555. And if you spent time listening and learning instead of being bossy and arrogant, your average call time for this week is wouldn't be 12% above tolerance, your hang-up rate would be normal, and complaints made by other reps within listening distance wouldn't be as high. I am going to call John Doe right now, explain what happened, and play a recording of this call back to him. You are doing nothing for this company except ruin our reputation. And you have wasted ten minutes of my time, and you STILL haven't diagnosed the problem. Good-bye."

[I made up the parts about coworker complaints, but I figured he wouldn't know.]

We hung up on him, called his sup, and his sup was really apologetic. He gave us a tech who determined the modem was bad (which I suspected but didn't know for sure, Apple sent us a replacement). Not only that, our department got a written apology from the supervisor and the tech two days later.

I wish I had that kind of power with my bank.

Ok... i worked for an ISP and didnt know about this site until after i quit, but now that i know of it i gots a story for ya.

ok, going through the usual troubleshooting ritual, i was discussing with an elderly lady about trying to get her TCP/IP settings right to connect to the servers.

after the first day, she said 'ive done that already' when i told her to do this. so i figured she was ahead of me and thought nothing of it.

** *note* never tell an elderly person to right click on the screen icon, while over the phone. **

day after day she called asking the same question, and it became normal for her to ask for me, because after a week.. she kindof learned my name. *sigh* well.. day 8, i decide im gonna make a house call. ive had enough of this. guess whats on her computer when i get there. the mouse is on the floor, and the moniter has "click" in medium sized letters written on the screen in black marker. ugh.. i just set up her connection, using the keyboard only(for the reason of when i asked why her mouse was on the floor she thought you used the mouse with feet and toes), she gave me a 20, and i went out the door and broke out into laughter when i got into my car.. the funniest S**T ive ever seen in my life.

I'm not tech support; in fact, I'm a user who thoroughly

enjoys this board! But I've got one on tech support.

When we came to work Monday morning our virus checkers

told us we had a virus. In accordance with corporate instructions,

quite of few of us reported this to the help desk. Each of

us was told, "Immediately disconnect your network cable, either

at the computer or the wall, whichever is more convenient,

and then shut down your computer."

After several hours and no apparent action, one of us called

the help desk to find out what was happening. The reply?

"Oh, we sent you an e-mail telling you what to do.

Didn't you get it?"

My wife's mother decided she needed a computer and asked my wife to ask me which one she should buy, since I work in the computer industry. All she wanted was to type letters, balance her checkbook, and keep track of her address/phone list. Since I had plenty of older systems, I just built her a system out of spare parts. She was so happy with a 286 with 8 MB of RAM, a 200 MB hard drive, and a dot-matrix printer, all set up with Ability (an integrated application which included a word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, and address book) that she literally cried. It served her quite well for a year, until she moved into a house willed to her by a friend. Her new home was out in the country and didn't have 3-wire outlets, and I told her I'd be out the next weekend to fit her office with the proper grounded outlet. She promised she wouldn't plug it in until I did that. Along about Wednesday, she called my wife and said her computer wasn't working anymore. When asked how she'd gotten it running without a 3-wire outlet, she said a friend of hers told her to just use a 2-to-3-wire adapter. It worked OK for a day or two, but one day it made a loud "cracking" noise and the computer died. When I checked it out, the power supply was fried, the motherboard was charred, and just about everything else was unusable. When my wife (gently) sked her why she'd ignored what I (an engineer in computer hardware and software) had told her, she said "Well, Bob said I could!" (Bob's the kind of guy who'd drill a second hole in the bottom of a boat to let the water run out as fast as it runs in.)

I offered her another computer, but she refused because they're "unreliable."

verbatim from a web-submitted case:

I had to download IE5.0 in order to use another Program called MSAT. Now anytime I click on a Web link IE opens. I'm a Netscape User and want IE5.0 to just sit quietly on my desktop and do what it's suppose to do, in the backround, when I use MSAT. I had this same problem when I was forced to download IE4.0, but I can't remember how I got Bill Gates to screw off and stop trying to control my Web world. Please help me put Bill back in the closet.Thanks

When I was doing my A levels (final school exams in England) I ended up been the only support for most of the computers in the school (I'd inherited it from my brother, who left the year before). Most of the M/c's were a mixture of Acorn A300, A3000, A440 and A4000. These were very nice systems that were very stable and easy to support (along with a GUI that windows has yet to become anywhere as nice).

These m/c's were supposedly the responsability of the only IT teacher in the School, but he could only use them as a basic user. He had the best m/c in the school, as a result I would use it quite often. My personnal preference was for a large screen area so I could see as much of what I was working as I could. The first time he saw me using his m/c in this state he complained that I had shrunk his icons and to put them back. So I explained that all I had done was change screen mode and that it can be changed back by clicking on the pallete icon on the toolbar and selecting a different mode (didn't even need to reboot) and did it at the sametime. He accepted it.

The problem was that everytime he saw me using his m/c he would complain about it and I would have to go through the entire rigmarole again - I thought Teachers were meant to be able to Learn.

OK, I'm an Programmer for a large distribution company here in the UK. We do support and get our share of 1d10t errors but I have to share this....

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, but suffice it to say that this is the guy whose PC I rebuilt three times in a fortnight, managed to land a job as a databse manager for a local government agency - he's now paid twice as much as me and is in charge of several people. Within days I had him on the phone asking how to open a CSV file and convert it to MS Excel format - WTF???? The smae day he sent me another file that he wanted converting *to* CSV format "because it was ASCII text" - needless to say, all I did was change the extension on file (it was already CSV, just without the extension).

I don't mind helping friends out but this guy takes the pi55. What's worse is that he got the job in the first place - I can see how local government get their reputation.

(/VENT)

I recently purchased a computer from a certain build to order computer company. The system arrived, and was not stable at all. WinME had not been fully installed, and the system restore kit they sent did not work. After 3 days of trying to get this darn system to work, I finally decided, what the heck, I'll call tech support. I think I must have gotten the dumbest tech support person ever to live.

ring ring... on hold for 2 hours

TS: Hello, this is **** with tech support, how can I help you?

Me: Well, I got this system from you and nothing seems to work. WinME will not recognize any CD put into the drive, so I cant install any drivers off your system install disk.

TS: Ok Sir, here is what we are going to do. Is your computer started up?

Me: Yes

TS: And you are in Windows?

Me: Yes

TS: Ok, we need to install drivers. Put your System CD in the drive and double click the D drive in My Computer

Me: I allready told you, it wont recognize my CD rom

TS: Just try it sir, what we need to do is get your CD-ROM drivers off the system install CD... (me inserting CD) .. ok.. now go to My Computer, and double click the D drive

Me: (click click click) There is no D drive.

TS: (without hesitation) Oh, I see here that you bought the Athlon 1100mhz Processor. I think that your processor is probably too powerful for WindowsME to handle.

Me: (phone drops) (laughing in the background)

I am not a tech support person but I often end up performing tech support for clients over the phone. In fact, when tech support has a problem, I am one of the first people they come to. The problem is, I usually have to help the techs - who know what they are doing - and when I help clients...well, sometimes I am an idiot. Two stories confirm this:

Client calls in saying that they can't print Word documents from our product. I go through some stuff, and confirm that the printer is up and connected, that other computers can print from it, and reinstall the printer on their computer. I also check a bunch of settings of ours on their computer. After about an hour I forward the call to our tech support. 1 minute later (it may have been actually less!!) our tech person (a woman, not that it matters) calls me and the following ensues:

Tech: "How do we print from our software."

Me: "We automate Word."

Tech: (with a perfectly normal tone) "Yep. That would mean that you need Word installed to print, right?"

Me: "Of course, everybody knows that" (still not getting it)

Tech: "Not everybody"

Me: "Well how can everybody not get it! If you want to print a Word document, you need the software!"

Tech: "Exactly" (see, now she is just being cruel.)

Me: "Yes! Exactly!.....oh...Word wasn't installed, was it?"

Tech: "No"

Yeah - that was embarrasing.

Another time, email would not send from our product. Again, I did a whole bunch of trouble shooting, setting checks, confirmed email would work on its own, and after 45 minutes, passed it off to the same tech that helped me on the first story. Once again, in a couple minutes she called back.

Tech: "What is the first thing to try when you have an error on a machine that 'used to work fine'?"

Me: (to my credit, I got this one right away) "Easy, reboot. Oh....REBOOT!" (The one thing I didn't try)

Tech: "The client is all fixed now."

To cap that one off, a week later, another employee (who sits 10 feet from the guy that had this same problem) calls up with the identical problem. I simply tell her to reboot her system and call me back. She does, and the first thing she says to me is "You're a genius!!!"

I love tech support staff...even when they solve all the problems, I still get credit. I thank all of you!! (grin)

I have actually had people call me and say "My computer power cable

is loose". I said "does you computer power up properly?" and I went on to say

are there any problems associated with this computer?" They

said no, I was just messing with the power cable jerking it around

and it comes out when I jerk on it. I just grinned and said "ok well send

you another one" GEEEZZZ..........

I work at an ISP. Last week I recived an e-mail from a customer.

"Hello. When I search the Internet, I sometimes gets the following message. Can you fix your server so it can deal with this (see file attached). Thank you in advance. Grateful for a reply."

The file attached was a HTML-document. When I opened it I could read:

"Error 404."

Me:Can I help you.

Customer:Yeah, I have been thinking about putting a new processor into my computer.

Me:Well, what do you have now?

Customer:I have a "10"

Me:(???)a ten..ummm

Customer:No, I mean a 400MHz celeron. I have a 10gb hard disk

Me:ok well what kind of processor would you like to upgrade to,AMD, Intel, what speed, socket/slot? all the general questions

(after about 10 minutes)

Customer:OK I want 800 MHz Athlon...will I have to change my MOTHERLOAD

!!!MOTHERLOAD!!!

I couldn't help it....I had to laugh...it..well it just killed me..lost the sale but it was funny.

I recently got a call from a woman who had purchased our Spanish software. Inside the program is a recorder so when you hear the spanish word, you can click on record and say the word yourself. Then you can learn how to say the word correctly.

The woman tells me the recorder isn't working. She turns the recorder on, she speaks, she turns the recorder off, and then she hits the play button to play it back and hears nothing. I asked her if she tested her microphone in another recording program, such as Windows Recorder. There was this long pause. Then she says "Microphone?" I don't have a microphone. I can barely contain myself. I asked her just out of curiosity what are you speaking into? And she tells me hers speakers!! I explain to her about input/output and quickly got off the phone so I could laugh my butt off.

I used to be the network admin for a small southeastern city. One day me and the other IT guy were installing some new workstations in a dept. of only women. At the same time on another floor the elevator repair company had some technicians repairing an elevator. After hooking everything up on a machine and sitting down for a few minutes to configure the network settings, the power suddenly went off. One of the elevator techs had accidentally cut the power to two floors (and he fixes elevators!). The entire room full of women turns to look at me and one of them says "What did you do?".

I tried to explain that except in the movies, you usually can't cut the electricity off from a pc.

Have this one monkey call in and complain that he doesn't know how to attach a file to Outlook. Simple call, right?

45 minutes later I've managed to get him to do it. He wasn't sure what file he needed, so he'd attach one at random. Then he wasn't sure it was the right file, so he'd open it from the message. Yes, it's the right file, so he minimizes Excel, then tries to send the message. 'Illegal operation, file already in use'. I rebooted, did windows housekeeping, and so on, and this happened every time. Finally, after the 15th time, he says 'There's a button on the bottom that says 'Excel' and the filename, is that important? You see, he was telling me he was CLOSING Excel, not minimizing it, and I had a hard enough time explaining what I meant by 'click on the button' that I didn't consider trying to explain 'look at the big grey bar on the bottom...'.

I growl out loud about this doof being a dimwit, and another tech looks over my shoulder and says 'Yeah, (losername) is a real dumb@$$.' Another turns around and says 'THAT guy?'

I do a scan in our records and find out this mook has called in almost 60 times in the last 9 months (I did a few random looks for some other people; second highest was 20, another one of our known problems.) and 15 of them were the -same call-. AND he complains that we don't train him, despite the fact that at least three of the times I've talked to him, he's kept going 'Slow down! I want to write this down!'

I had a co-worker come up to me a few days back asking me

about some modem problems they were having with there computer.

It seemed that during a storm, the modem had got struck.

They had went out and got a new modem, but were not able to

get online. It seemed that windows found the modem and

installed it, but they still could not log online. I couldn't

do much without seeing it, but I instructed them to go into

the controle panels/modems and remove any listings for their

old modem if listed. She jotted a few things to try down and

left. The next day she came back and said they did everything

and it still didn't work. She asked if I could look at it, and

we set a time that it would be brought over(I did instruct to only

bring the computer, and not monitor etc). Shortly after getting

it hooked up, I began looking for anything wrong. I couldn't find

anything wrong with the modem. I asked what there internet was, and

found out it was AOL. Starting AOL, yep, can't dial. Went into the

setup, and had it find the new modem. After it found it, it dialed

out just fine. I explained the problem to them. Their coment was

"Well, we called AOL several times and they said it was the modem that

was bad. This is the 4th one we've put in." Now, I don't expect people

to know a lot about computers, and most to not know about switching

parts, but shouldn't AOL tech support know if you change a modem that you

need to change the program to use it?

Everyone knows how ignorant users can be when it comes to the right click function of a mouse, right? This blows all of them out of the water. I asked a user to "right click" on their My Connection entry icon and go to the properties selection. A few moments go by and I ask " Are you still there?" "Yeah, I just wrote click on My connection but I can not find the properties anywhere" They said it so matter of factly. I was completely speechless. Now I say, "Using the right mouse button..." A DUN connection in only twenty minutes preety good for this user. I mutter why cant we outsource and I will just program all day, grumble.

Any body else ever have this happen to them?

I do tech support for an ISP. We received an email from one of our customers that asked:

"What is email and how do I use it"

Go figure.

I work for an Internet Technical Support Company, as a helpdesk technician. Here's what happened to me one day.

Me: Internet Tech Support, how may I help you?

Cust: Yes, I am going through your setup disk, and it's trying to dial an 800 number..... well, it's telling me there's no answer.

Me: Okay, did you type in a dialing prefix earlier in the setup?

Cust: No, but I do have a question... does my telephone company have to be open for me to connect to the setup? I know it's after 5PM here, and my telephone company is closed.

Me: No ma'am your telephone company doesn't have to be open to connect to the setup.

Cust: I think it does have to be open, are you sure?

Me: Okay, I have a question for you? Does your telephone company have to be open for you to make a phone call?

Cust: Well, no, but I thought it would be different for the internet....

We did fix the problem, but I couldn't believe this woman thought her phone company had to be open to connect to the internet.... :)

I used to work for a company that provided turn key systems with our software installed and configured on it. We were a small company, and before i came on the Support And Installation department had a bad reputation for poor qaulity. The owner had laid off all of the department for incompetence, except for Kieth, who was our Senoir Support Technician. That was when I got hired on. One day a new customer called. I recognized the customer's name, because he had been in our office for training the week before, and I had built his system for him. He took it with him when he left on Friday. It was Monday. I knew something was wrong. Here is how the conversation went: (M=Me;K=Kieth;C=Customer)

M: Thank you for calling ******* Software, This is Chris, how can I help you?

C: Good Morning Chris, This is ***** with ******. Listen Chris, I was told by other owners that I shouldn't have baught from you guys, but I did anyways. They told me you would forget something, and mess up my order. I took a chance and you guys screwed up.

M: OK Sir, whatever it is I am sure we can fix it, just tell me what is wrong.

C: You forgot to send me my "Don'ts" book.

M: [I mute the phone and turn to Keith] Kieth do we have a "Don'ts" book that we send with our systems now??

K: Not that I am aware of.

M: [I unmute the phone] Sir, there isn't a "Don'ts" book we send with our systems.

C: Look, don't try to play games with me, you sent me my "Do's" book. I want my "Don'ts" book.

M: [I mute the phone and turn to Keith] Kieth do we have a "Do's" book that we send with our systems now??

K: Nope, don't have that either.

M: [I unmute the phone] Sir, we don't send a "Do's" book with our systems either.

C: Look Chris, I am holding it in my hand so don't try to tell me you don't send them out. D O S "Do's" now I want my "Don'ts"

M: Sir, That is DOS, it is the abbreviation for Disk Operating System. It's a Microsoft product that enables your computer to work.

C: Oh, Sorry for the misunderstanding.

The customer then abruptly hung up, and never called again. I got the feeling that if his computer was on fire he wouldn't have called.

I work in the IS department of the local college. To supplement my income, I do some work after hours for some of our professors. Most of this is just to install software or troubleshoot little problems on their home computers. However...the bane of my existence...who claims to be the most technologically advanced person on campus, in town, and in the region for that matter....called me at 3 a.m. - his email didn't work. So I walked him through the settings. He swore up and down that they were set exactly as I told him to set them. He hadn't touched them. (Yeah, right.....) Told him I would come by his house after work that evening. Not good enough...he wanted his email fixed...and FIXED NOW!!!!! Told him I would charge him $100 (in cash mind you) for a house call at this time of the morning. He agreed (sucker). So I drove out to his house....unchecked the box he swore he didn't check, and his email worked. Easiest money I ever made....

As I've been working at phone support for a national PC-company, I ran into some pretty bizarre situations. As we all know, computer are easily upgraded and for those purposes, stores sell all kinds of hardware. At some point, I was called by a customer about upgrading his PC.

TS = me

C = customer

TS: "Good afternoon, **** speaking. How may I help you?"

C: "I read in a magazine that it is possible to upgrade your PC so that it can be faster or perform more complex tasks."

*NOTE: The magazine he referred to is aimed at the TOTAL beginners*

TS: "That's correct, you're allowed to upgrade your PC. But in the event of a defect, it's up to our technician to judge if your computer can be repaird under warranty or that you have to pay, in case it is your own fault."

C: "I understand that, thanks so far."

Well, the customer hung up and I informed my manager about this particular customer, in case he would call again for a repair.

A few days later, I get the same customer again.

C: "My computer stopped functioning."

TS: "What doesn't work?"

C: "As soon as I press the power-button, I get a number of beeps and the screen goes blank again. I cannot hear any harddrive start."

After checking some cables, I figured it was time to go for the technician and began writing down stuff.

TS: "What's your warranty-number?"

C: "Warranty-number? Where can I find that?"

TS: "It's written on the back of your computer, or it is printed on the warranty-certificate."

C: "Well, I thought the certificate was just the instruction-leaflet, so I threw that away. And I'm unable to find a number on the back of my computer."

TS: "Allright sir, I'll send out a technician to your home-address. You will be called this afternoon to make an appointment".

So far, so good. Although, we thought so...

- When the technician arrived, the customer was still hiding his tools, computer-parts and solder.

- Our computer was completely stripped down. The motherboard and harddrive were built into another case.

- The customer added a sound-card from a different brand, as well as a newly-bought VGA-card.

- He combined 100MHz SDRAM(ours) and 66Mhz EDO-RAM on the motherboard.

- Several conductors were soldered back onto the motherboard after the broke off during the stripping of the computer.

As soon as the tech realized this was no normal warranty, he called the manager and together they decided to tell the customer that all warranty was void. Upon doing so, the customer seized the tech, locked all doors and demanded that he fixed the PC. Before doing so, he wanted to go to the bathroom, where he called the manager. The manager alerted the police and the police were able to relieve the technician and arrest the customer.

Worst part of the story... The customer DID receive a new computer from our company...

Several years ago, our engineering team had a need for a larger hard drive in the server. I told my boss to just buy a new 4 GB (that was huge back then) hard drive and I'd install it. His response was that he had a service contract, and the manufacturer would install the new drive for just the cost of the drive.

About a week later, my boss brought the tech to me and asked me to take him over to the server and shut it down for him. After about two hours, the tech came over and asked if there was a phone he could use. I offered him mine. Whoever he was calling wasn't in so he left a voicemail something like this "Hey, Joe, this is Bill. I'm at ---- and I can't figure out how to set the master/slave options on this hard drive. Call me back at (my number) please."

I asked him if he was having problems with the drive, and he said "Yes, there's nothing on the drive or the paperwork on how to set it as a slave drive." I explained that that's because it was a SCSI drive. At his blank look, I explained how the SCSI bus worked, and that SCSI drives have an address (called a LUN) from 0 to 7, with the boot drive (usually) at 0 and the adapter card (usually) at 7. CD-ROM's usually count down from address 6 and extra hard drives count up at 1 (usually). I showed him how to set the drive to LUN 1. He installed it and booted the server. The drive spun up; he formatted it successfully and left.

Two days later, my boss asked me if I knew what had happened, because the OEM had sent him a bill for $250 because the job took more than the allotted time because we had "unusual hardware." I explained exactly what happened, and why the job had taken so long.

He sent the OEM a bill for $250 for my time spent in teaching their tech how to do his job. I wonder how the poor tech would have handled it if I'd started talking about MFM drives, RLL drives, Winchester drives, etc.? I'm sure his brain would have exploded.

PS: Two months later when my boss wanted to upgrade the server from a P90 to a P133, install two SCSI cards (for the SCSI CD towers he needed to add) and add 64 MB (ooh, aah) of RAM, he had me do it.

I work for an outsourcer that handles support for a very large free ISP. We do not handle the support pages for our clients, however. One day When viewing the page, we found that there was a section of the page that actually had screenshots showing customers how to go into to dos and delete msvcrt.dll, as a solution to a few common problems. That page has since been removed, after 4 notifications to network operations. For those of you that don't know, if that file is deleted - windows won't load and you must restore the file or reinstall windows

While walking a client through a shutdown on a UNIX machine.......

support- please type in "shutdown -g0"

client- "s-h-u-t-d-o-w-n -g " would that be the letter or the number 0.

support- Ma'am that would be the number zero over on the keypad of numbers next to the "." key

client - Oh! That zero.

I'm not a professional tech, although I would be if somebody would hire a 15-year old guy.

Yesterday my friend comes over for Thanksgiving dinner (We live in Canada) and he tells me all about his new (literally less than a month old) computer. Internet Explorer is not working to access the internet.

Rogers@Home: It must be your ethernet adapter.

NDC: It must be Rogers@Home.

Rogers@Home: Does any other software work to access the internet?

/Netscape works, so it must be IBM's fault./

IBM: Some files used to run Internet Explorer are corrupted. If I tell you any more it's a $50 charge.

Friend: What else can I do, must pay it.

IBM: Use system restore disk.

/My friend decides to do that the next day as it's getting late. Then he comes over for dinner./

Me: These guys are crazy, call me tomorrow!

Next day I walk him through...uninstalling and reinstalling Internet Explorer! What do you know, it works again!

I just laugh that me, a 15-year old guy can figure out the simplest solution to a problem that four (hopefully) professional techs couldn't figure! Now he is going to IBM to try to get his $50 back.

I do tech support for an Internet content company. Recently, one of our new subscribers called to complain that she wasn't getting any of our e-mail newsletters.

Me: "I apologize for that, ma'am. If you'll just give me your e-mail address, I'll be happy to look it up in the database."

Her: "Sure. It's J-A-N-E, space, S-"

Me: "Uh, hang on one second. Did you say 'space'?"

Her: "Yes..."

Me: "Um... uh, I'm sorry, but your e-mail address can't have a space"

Her: "But it does."

Me: "Look, I don't mean to be contrary, but I've worked with computers for ages. I promise you, e-mail addresses can't have spaces in them."

Her (indignant): "Mine does! My ISP made a special exception."

Realizing that I couldn't win this one, I glumly took down her e-mail address, and told her that I would e-mail her and let her know whether she had subscribed to any newsletters. Needless to say, she hasn't heard from me.

I work for an ISP, and one of our new users recently called to say that he was having trouble getting to a website. I asked him to type in the address, starting with www, and hit 'enter'. He did, then said "It says 'Yahoo! cannot find any matches...'

Aha! I informed him that he would need to type the address up in the address field, not in the search field. "Uh... I don't see an address field" he replied. After several unsuccessful minutes, I asked him what web browser he was using. "Yahoo!" he replied, sounding pleased that he was able to give me the answer to something. I patiently explained that Yahoo! is not a web browser, but a search engine. I asked him to go to Help ) About. Guess what he replied? "Yahoo! has found the following matches for Help About..."

One of the worst types of callers you can encounter in tech support is the user who thinks he knows a lot about computers.

Caller: I'm having a problem booting up.

Me: Okay, what exactly happens when you turn on your PC?

Caller: What does that have to do with anything? I'm having trouble booting up a website.

Me: Um - okay. What's the problem, exactly.

Caller: I type the address, but it doesn't boot up. I think it has something to do with my CD-RAM.

And so on and so forth. I wanted to tell the caller that his best bet was to reformat his desktop's ISDN. He probably would have pretended to know what I was talking about, and said "Okay, I'll call you back when that's done!"

I work for a large call center that supports many different large companys. The one I work for has a DSL service. I had a lady call and the phone call went like this:

m = me

c = customer

m: thank you for calling ***, my name is Dan, can I have your billing telephone # area code 1st please?

c: my what?

m: your phone #

c: oh.. thats ***-***-****

m: ok ma'am, what state are you in?

c: chicago

m: illinois?

c: thats right

m: Ok ma'am, what seems to be the problem?

c: My DSL don't work

m: Ok ma'am, where does the problem start

c: at the beginning

m: ma'am are you using the ***** software to connect?

c: the what?

m: ma'am you were supplied with special software that allows you to connect to your DSL

c: well.. no I didn't recieve any software. I'm still waiting for everything in the mail

m: ma'am, what Kind of computer do you have?

c: well I dont know, its not here yet.

m: ma'am, do you know what DSL is?

c: well, no.. I know its for the computer

m: which you dont have yet..

c: thats right..

m: ok ma'am well DSL is for the Internet, and outside of a way to connect to the Internet, you will need a computer to connect to the internet

c: ohhh ok.. well ill just wait until i get my dsl then, and Ill call you back

m: sounds wonderful ma'am, goodbye

After that was a string of profanites and laughter. I wonder every day how long I can work with these monkies that some how figured out how to dial a phone to call ME!

Sometimes our multi function units need to have the firmware upgraded by running a copy command with a binary switch from a DOS prompt, such as "copy firmwarefile.dat lpt1 /b"...and our service centers normally

can handle such a minor job after we supply them with the data file...this one particular morning we had a service center call that was having difficulty performing this task...well, to make a long story short they in fact DID NOT have the file...they were trying to upgrade the firmware without even having the data...and then proceeded to ask "well, can't you just FAX me the file?"...we thought about making a photocopy of a diskette and faxing it to them but...

some days....

Today I’d like to take a moment to introduce you all, to a customer who I will affectionately term “Mr. GIB”.

Now Mr. GIB is not your ordinary customer he is quite friendly and good-natured, all he wants is an answer to his “simple” question. Now some of you are probably already asking what that question was, It is for you that I’ll say: may the lord bless your souls. For merely the interest in Mr. GIB is enough to make me want to cry… Sadly though his question was simple, simple in his own simple world of simple-ness, where simple is, as simple does, and simple never really is very simple at all.

Alas I digress though for his question must be told. He being a simple “GIB” kind of guy… Had ordered our boxed set Compendium of Might & Magic straight from our direct sales department. He had the game in his lap when he called, not installed. He had ordered the game and had it rushed to his door then called ME of all people, to check and see, if the game he wanted was in the box he received. Now I heard his simple question and thought to myself… “Now Mr. GIB I can’t believe you just asked that. It makes me wonder”… In the end after 10 painful minutes of simple chatter, with simple Mr. GIB, about his simple question, about his simple game… I realized that after so much searching… Mr. GIB, that’s, “Game In the Box” for those who don’t know, just couldn’t believe that he had Kings Bounty!, actually in his lap without anymore bother… To this Friday question I say: Good by Mr. GIB I hope you realize I’m not God I cannot tell you what’s inside a sealed package across the country in your lap. All I can say is that it says “also includes the classic King’s Bounty” in large print on the box right in front of poor Mr. GIB.

Yours truly,

Mr. Technical Support.

I work for a major video game company and after 2 years I believe I've heard it all. this was a favorite though...

me: hello thanks for calling my name is...

customer: I just bought a new computer and your %*#$@ game broke it!

me: [thinking] cant happen not possible. [Saying] what game was it?

customer: Army Men, I cant move the little green man. my computer is broken and it's your games fault!

me: Ok so let me get this straight. you installed the game and it seemed to run fine until you got into the part of the game where you start to play, but then you can't move your army man. right?

customer: yes exactly!

me: [Thinking that the game uses keyboard input for movement not the mouse, and that it's a new machine] I say: you said it's a new machine right?

customer:Yes.

me: How new?

customer: We just bought it yesterday and your %$*@ game broke it!

me: Ok so you just got the machine. what was the first thing you installed on it?

customer: your game!

me: [remembering that it uses keyboard input not the mouse put the pieces together] and ask her: well this game uses the keyboard for movement.. is the keyboard plugged in all the way?

customer: [sounds of moving the machine to look at the back in the background and a young child saying "here's the cord momy"]Oh my... I feel so stupid oh shoot I'm dumb...

Me: [silence]

The whole call took under 5 minutes but my brain still hurts when I think about it.

Our company uses a piece of software that is basically Win16 code with little pieces of 32-bit code stuck hither and yon. (Think of spaghetti with little meatballs, an apt metaphor for other reasons as well.) It is barely TAPI compliant (it will use the modem Windows 95/98/NT chooses if you specify the COM port). It prefers you use one of about 100 specified modems with carefully programmed strings. Of course, most of the modem strings programmed are for 14.4kbaud and 28.8kbaud modems. I think Fred Flintstone owned one of those.

One of the users decided he wanted to use his cell phone with the program, so a friend showed him how turn on the semi-TAPI selection. Problem was, the friend didn't do a quick process called "registering the communications object." If you don't register, you can't use the modem in that configuration, and you can't turn the configuration off, either. VERY ANNOYING, but not unfixable. We're used to it; it takes five minutes tops to reset over the phone, one if we can lay hands on the computer ourselves.

Well, the friend must have known he didn't exactly know what he was doing, because he copied the program directory to another location as a backup. When his changes didn't work, he copied the directory back. Except he must have done something wrong, because suddenly the guy's software is using a different division's configuration file.

The user calls in today and what should have been a five minute fix becomes a three hour hunt for the correct configuration file, that finally ends with me sending the correct file to the guy's wife's e-mail address.

Look, folks, it's really hard to break a computer or a piece of software. You have to be doing something you shouldn't be. But if something does break, don't trust the friend that broke it to fix it. If he knew what he was doing, it wouldn't be broken in the first place.

I'm not a tech support guy, but I feel that this story deserves to be shown.

Last year in high school my English teacher told me that she had a problem with her computer. She said that she could not find internet explorer. I told her I'd see about it, and she brought in the computer. I took one look at the monitor and was dumbfounded. The shell was cracked, and was falling off the screen. It was horrible. I paid no attention to it at first, reinstalled IE (someone deleted it) and questioned her about the cracked case. She replied, "When the icon wouldn't come up, I thought it was a problem with the monitor, so I used a hammer to break the plastic to see if i could fix it." I could not help but to fall on the floor laughing hysterically.

This call came into a certain South Dakota Computer company Networking Tech Support line. I remember because a huge hoot and howl went up in the pod while I was on another call and heard it from my manager who had been on the headphones at the time.

It was a routine peer to peer networking call and the solution was adding the NetBeui Protocol, however when the man explained his wiring situation we thought we had found the real problem. It seems the wiring was a strand of barbed wire in the fence between his house and his barn. In his laconic way he explained that he had to tweak the twists now and again but it worked really well - unless it rained or a cow leaned up against it!

I work at a help desk and I had a lady call me up and ask me to sent a tech to her desk to look at her computer. I ask the lady "What is the problem?" she replied and said that her hard drive is squeaking and she needs to have a tech oil it. At this time I didn't know if I should laugh or feel sorry for this the lady.

This isn't so much a tech support story but a home experience. I’m 18 and my little brother is 15. We had bought a new computer from Gateway 2000 a few months ago for my dad to do office work on, and it came with a free trial of AOL for a year. My little brother, being a freshman in high school, thinks AOL is the best thing since the calculator. He tries to get on my dad’s computer as much as he can so he can use AOL. I was building my new computer (first home-grown system =) ), and I had stored the files I needed on the Gateway over the home LAN. I found out quickly that AOL “secures” the computer it is on from a LAN when it is running. When I was working on adding the drivers to my computer, my brother walked over to the Gateway and launched AOL. I told him that he has to get off so I can transfer files from the Gateway onto my computer. He asked me why, and I told him that AOL prevents me from accessing the network. He retorts by saying “Well don’t we have three networks?” I just give him a puzzled look, knowing that there’s only ONE network between the computers (and I don’t see how I could rig them to support more than just that one). He points to my 5-port hub and tries to say that the 3 cat5’s hooked up to the hub are the three networks. Apparently he doesn’t realize that those 3 cat5’s are the three computers that we have, and those are their connections to the network. He just stormed off and left me to load my drivers. I guess you could say my little brother isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer (Especially since I know 12-year-olds who know far more than him.). ;)

As I was typing up the tale I just sent in (I'm at school right now), one of the teachers who was in the room doing her grades on Grade Quick on the computer next to me asked me to help her with her computer. I said okay and rolled my chair on over to see what's wrong. She said her disk was stuck in the disk drive, so I looked at the disk drive and noted that the button was still recessed into the case. I pushed the door on the drive open to peak inside, and I found no disk in there. I told her that there's no disk in the drive to remove. I looked around the desk a little, and sure enough, it was sitting under her grade book. She poped the disk in and went back to work. I managed to hold the laughter in just long enough to get back to my terminal. =) By the way, don't get me wrong. This teacher is a nice lady, just not the brightest on the subject of computers.

I read this story in a book about the old days when computers fit in rooms, not pockets:

It seems this military base had a massive mainframe computer that handled everything. Every day at about the same time, it would throw spurious errors for about 15-20 minutes, then stop. The techs worked for weeks both remotely and in the console room trying to find the problem. Finally, a tech went tot he actual computer room (hard to get into due to security limitations) and called the console room. The tech in the console room said "it's happenning now," so the tech in the computer room started looking at all the systems. He heard an odd whirring noise in one corner of the room, and asssumed it was a problem with a hard drive, a tape transport, or something similar. When he got there, a lowly Private was waxing the floor with a motor-driven polisher. The cable for the polisher was plugged into one of the outlets inside a computer cabinet. He asked the private "Do you do this often?" "Every day at this time, sir." "Do you always use that outlet?" "Yes, sir--that's the one the Sergeant told me to use." "OK. Would you mind using one of the ones on the wall from now on?" "Whatever you say, sir." The tech locked all the computer cabinets (per policy) and left.

The tech related the story to his boss; the boss called the base commander. Later, the tech asked his boss if the base commander was upset. The boss replied "No; I just told him it was a buffer problem, but it's fixed now."

I build my own PC's -- so I am my own tech support... and I'm the clueless luser...

I got a new motherboard&CPU. My coworker wanted to help / watch me put it together because he was planning on purchasing the same system and wanted to know what "gotchas" to look for. This was fine with me because his last job was as tech support for a large PC company... it's ALWAYS good to have trained tech support sitting with you when you're building a new machine -- even if you DO know what you're doing :-)

Anyway, we took everything out of the box, put the CPU & memory in the motherboard, fitted the motherboard in the case, hooked up the powersupply, powerswitch cables, LED cables, speaker cable, keyboard, video card, & monitor.

Time for the "moment of truth". Hit the power switch!

Power came on, keyboard lights flashed, monitor synced up, the POST (power on self test) ran, and I got a message on the screen "CPU change detected. Please press DEL to enter BIOS and confirm new CPU selection." OK, that makes sense - it's the first time this CPU has been in this motherboard...

DEL

DEL

DEL DEL

DELDELDELDEL

Uh oh. No response.

Reboot. Nothing.

Unplug the keyboard & Plug it back in. Nada.

Reseat the CPU, memory, etc. Nope.

Time to start reading the manual. (The manual is always the LAST resort, isn't it??)

The manual says that a cheap CPU fan can over-voltage on startup and confuse the bios (this motherboard has a fan RPM indicator...) -- so move the fan power leads to a different connector that doesn't report RPMs. Doesn't help.

The manual says that connecting a bootable device can sometimes help pass the POST. Hook up a hard drive. ZIP.

Now I'm starting to get worried...

Maybe the keyboard is bad (after all, it's got a manufacturer's date of 1988 ... I *LOVE* those old, 10 pound true-blue IBM keyboards!) Try a different keyboard. ZILCH.

At this point my "tech support" friend is saying "Pull the battery! Clear the CMOS!!" Thanks for the help.

And I notice I've got the keyboard plugged into the mouse port...

(sigh)

Several years ago when my wife was working on her Mater's Degree, she did her thesis work on a laptop with a word processor (WordStar). One day, she called me in a panic; it seems she decided that using the abbreviation "USA" was less professional than spelling it out, so she just went to "replace" entered USA and United States of America and clicked on "change all." You former WordStar users know what's coming next--does anybody wantt o guess how many times "usa" appeared in the text inside words?

The first question I asked was "did you do ANYTHING since that happened?" She said "No. I was afraid to." I then taught her three things:

1) How to use Undo.

2) She always backed up her work at the end of each day--I tought her to back up her work before she ever did anything global.

3) I taught her about the "same case" and "entire word only" options for "replace all."

I am a proficient member of an area of technology where one can have a degree and still be the dumbest #$%^ in the region. Yes. Computers. Need proof, let's take one of my ex-employers, who I will call, Moron. (Why not? It's what I called him every day at work.) Now, Moron ran a business in which we dealt with PCs. Moron knew PCs. In fact, he was actually semicompetant at them, if you ignore the day I fixed a PC in 3 minutes that he couldn't fix in 6 days, explaining calmly to me that Keyboard BIOSes were designed to be impossible to break... Or if you ignore the day when he tried to plug a SCSI device into a printer port. And so on.

Moron's incredible stupidity, however, really showed on two platforms with which he had zero knowledge. The first was a Macintosh. The second, of course, was UNIX. Perhaps the fact that UNIX doesn't crash confused him. Perhaps it was the flexible command interfaces. Or maybe WindowMaker looks too good :)

Well... We have a client who's setting up a large TCP/IP network. They're pretty smart. They know what they want, they know what software they need, and they buy it from someone with a brain- and decide Moron is intelligent enough to run Ethernet cable and type in some settings. So, since they'd purchased UNIX equipment, and were going to be using TCP/IP, I give him the crash course- and 5 index cards with route, ifconfig, and similar commands, and the UNIX device names for ethernet interfaces on several types of workstation and server boxes.

Later that day, I get The Phone Call, in which Moron insists I have either given him incorrect information, or forgotten to test all the cabling. The problem: If machine A tries to ping machine (anything else), the collision light goes on, stays on.

I do the annoying thing a legally blind technician does when it becomes clear a site visit is unavoidable. I call the bus company and find out what buses to take to use as little taxi service as possible- I wasn't compensated for these things, you know.

Upon arriving, it takes all of 3 minutes to figure out the problems which exist in this network.

1. 150 machines running ARP, NFS, and other chatty protocols, on one Ethernet segment, is unwise.

2. The netmask was 255.255.255.255 on all machines- with a manual routing entry pair on each machine, pointing to the machine to the left, and the machine to the right.

3. You run Token Ring in loops. YOU DON'T RUN #$%^ING ETHERNET IN LOOPS!

So much for his 2 degrees (one in computer science, one in programming), and his certifications from Novell, Epson, Microsoft, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Packard-Bell!!

(Of course, that last one should clue you in...)

More to follow. I have 13 years worth of this #$%^!

Moron, my boss from "Degrees Are Meaningless", caused a rather cute problem roughly 3 days after the TCP/IP configuration #$%^up.

I'm sitting at my desk, BORED. I've repaired 14 systems in 3 hours and had nothing to do... Phone rings. Check caller ID. Uhoh. Moron's cellphone.

"Hi, whatcha need?"

"Tell me you can fix phones."

"Ya, why?"

"We got a problem here."

Those phones, I couldn't fix. It seems that Moron doesn't understand 3 phase power. He wanted to plug in a server, but can't find a regular outlet for it (it's an NT box), so he finds the outlet the IBM they were using 10 years before was plugged into.

Takes a 3-phase power cord that he got (I don't even want to know where), and splices a PC power cord onto it- figuring "It's just electricity, it doesn't matter what pinouts I use." Well, amazingly, the NT box, set for 120V, didn't like 240V.

The REAL problem though was the extra wires- which were sort of dangling into one of the ports on the PBX controller- the cable went over the top of it, because the PBX controller was between the outlet and the server.

Moron plugs cable in, and takes out a $5,000 phone controller.

Next one is about the dumbest user we ever had...

*ring*

Me: "Hello, may I help you?"

MSCE: "Hi, this is Phil. I bought a computer from you people last week." (Oh, hi, Phil, I remember you, the guy who paid me $75 to pretend to overclock his CD-ROM!)

Me: "Mmm-hmm."

MSCE: "It doesn't work."

Me: "What's the problem?" (You get your brain stuck in the disk drive slot?)

MSCE: "Nothing will turn on. Not the monitor, computer, scanner, printer, external modem, or the plotter." (We special ordered a plotter for him. I asked him, curious if he knew, what a plotter was, and he said, "No, but I need one." What the...)

Me: "Did you check the power?"

MSCE: "What do you think I am, an idiot?"

Me: "I'd answer that but I'd get fired."

MSCE, now pissed: "I want onsite service. I paid for onsite service."

Me: "I get there and it's unplugged or something else stupid, you're getting billed."

MSCE: "Just get the #$%^ down here." (That, by the way, is _way_ toning down his tirade of obscenities.)

I show up. Power strip is turned off. I write him a bill, for $75. He tears it up. I write him another one, for $5,075, and he asks how the #$%^ I come up with that. I write down on the bill sheet: "1 hour labor, $75. One sheet of carbon paper, $5,000." Now he's REALLY pissed...

I leave, with him refusing to pay the $75, and warn him his warranty is now void. 3 days later he brings it in. The _whole system._ For one problem with the scanner, it ONCE caused a crash. (Under Windows, big surprise. Woohoo.) I tell him the system isn't under warranty, and he punches me. I have him, ahem, escorted from the building, and he never saw that computer again. He called a week later asking if I thought he was #$%^ing stupid. And, for the first time in my life, I was directly rude to a customer. "Yes, Phil, I think you're so god damn retarded that they should hire you to work on Windows programming. You'd fit right in." I slammed the phone down and took the rest of the day off- and DIDN'T get my pay docked for it. :)

Another MSCE guy, much simpler story. Breaks his computer by spilling coffee on the case. This isn't the problem. The problem is trying to clean it by unplugging the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, carrying it outside, and not remembering to unplug the POWER CORD before spraying it with a GARDEN HOSE.

Two words: "Warranty void."

1. Folded in half to be stuck into a 3.5" drive.

2. Rammed in two at a time (to copy the disk without swapping them.)

3. Seen a drive door FORCED closed on a disk not in all the way.

4. "Oh, you mean those jackets are for something?"

5. Moron decided the boot disk would be fun to throw to his dog.

6. Same moron as in #5 somehow accidentally dropped his boot disk in the toilet before taking a leak- and made a service call to a tech to fish it out of the toilet. (We did NOT send one.)

7. Same moron as #1 tried to stuff a 5.25" and 3.5" disk in the same drive at the same time. She did this twice- once with a 5.25" drive, once with a 3.5".

8. Putting them in a VHS VCR.

9. Opening the sleeve, pulling out the physical disk, and wiping it on her shirt. I'm quite ashamed to say that #9 was my mother.

10.Erased files on floppy to make space, wrote new files to it, then wondered where the old ones were. Hi, Dad.

(As I post more you'll see why I now refuse to give my family technical support.)

Here is just a sampling of the incredulously ridiculous things my mother has done...

1. Checking the mailbox on the front of our house when the computer says she has mail. It wasn't until she checked her e-mail for the first time on a Sunday, and it said she had mail, that she figured it out- after complaining to me that the computer was wrong.

2. Her inkjet printer needed a new ink cartridge. She literally tore the front off the COMPUTER to install it. When I denounced this as stupid, she wanted to know why there was a hose between the computer and printer.

3. Wondered why when she lost her temper at the Mac and punched it repeatedly, it stopped booting.

4. Drove her ISP insane by calling them to whine every time any web site she tried to access was down.

5. Drove them more insane by calling them to ask for help with her word processor. (She uses a great ISP- they helped her with it.)

6. Paging her ISP's emergency number to ask for a jumpstart at 6AM. Her rationale? "You can find anything on the net, according to my son!"

(You know, I'm SO friggin' glad my mother doesn't have the brains to find this site...)

7. Called AOL (even though it isn't her ISP) for technical support connecting to AOLIM. (It took them, by the way, 6 hours to figure it out.)

8. Putting multiple CD-ROMs in the drive at once and wondering what the funny noise was.

9. Tearing the tray off the drive to clean it, then trying to push it back in.

10.Insisting I was lying when I said her Mac couldn't read a 5.25" Commodore 128 floppy.

11.Asking our ISP to check her mail folder every day before she logged in to delete the spam for her. (!!!!)

12.Calling our ISP's tech support to ask them to send me e-mail asking me to stop making fun of her in front of my geek friends...???!!! WTF!

The following is a transcript of a call I took recently. Before you read it, let me point out that we provide support for internal customers, meaning people who work for our company.

That being the case, we rarely run into callers like the guy below.

Read on....

ME: Tech support, This is xxxxxxx speaking, how can I help you?

Idiot User: (This is an Asian caller with a thick accent, and keeps mangling words.) Um..yes?

Me: How can I help you sir?

I.U.: Um..I don't know.

Me: Well...I really need something to go on here. What kind of problems are you having?

I.U: Um..I don't know what I did.

Me: Okay..and....?

I.U: Well..I don't know.

Me: Again, I really need more to go on than that.

I.U: Well..I um..I put a sheep on the keyboard, and now it don't work.

Me: What?

I.U: I said I put the sheep on the keyboard, and it don't work now.

Me: Okay..what exactly do you mean by "sheep"?

I.U: A SHEEP. I put it on the keyboard and now it don't work!

Me: Well there's no need to shout. Can I put you on hold for a moment?

I.U: Yes.

**So I put him on hold, and by now I'm just trying to figure out what a "sheep" is, and trying not to laugh. I asked one of the senior members on the team if he has any clue what is going on.

This person, having no sense of humor whatsoever, and not seeing where this call is obviously going to end up, says "Maybe it's that sheep screen saver. I've heard it can lock up computers"

'Thanks, I'll ask him"***

Me: okaaay....thanks for holding. Are you telling me this is a screen saver?

I.U: NO! It is a SHEEP on my keyboard!

Me: Are you saying "sheep"? (I then spell it out, using "p" for Paul at the end)

I.U: Yes! You don't understand ENGLISH?

Me:(Getting harder to avoid laughing) Alrighty then. So you say the keyboard is not working, correct?

I.U: Yes.

Me: Can you use your mouse?

I.U: Yes.

Me: Okay. Let's try a few things. First, click on Start, then click shutdown ,and follow the normal method you use to turn of the computer.

I.U: I can't do that.

Me: Why?

I.U: Because I normally use my keyboard and I can't do that now because it doesn't work because of the sheep.

Me: (Everyone else is off their calls and listening in. The snickering in the background was not helping me at all)Okay. well let's pretend you don't have a keyboard ,and use the mouse to shut your system off.

I.U: Why?

Me: Why what?

I.U: Why do I have to use the mouse?

Me: Because you said you have a sheep on your keyboard, and it doesn't work.

IU: Are you making fun of me?

Me: What? No. I'm just repeating what you've told me.

IU: Okay. The computer is off.

Me: Good. can you see the back of your computer?

IU: No. It is facing the other way.

***Again, he goes on hold, because I can't NOT laugh any more. Tears were welling up in my eyes because I was fighting so hard not to laugh. About a minute later, I've regained most of my composure and go back on the phone.***

Me: Thanks for waiting. I had to check a couple things before going on. Okay, so the computer is off. Can you turn the system around so you can see the back?

I.U: Yes. just a second. (Pause) I can only turn it a little bit.

Me:(Yes, I know I was asking for it, but it had to be asked) Why?

I.U: Because the keyboard is in the way.

Me: Well move the keyboard then.

I.U: Where to?

Me: Can you just move it down to the seat of your chair, or to the side?

I.U: No.

Me: Why? Is the cord to short?

I.U: NO! The sheep will fall off if I do that.

Me: (I am now thoroughly confused) Well then..can you see if the keyboard is plugged in tightly?

I.U: Yes. It is tight.

Me: You're sure the fit is snug?

I.U: Yes.

Me: Good turn the computer back to it's original position and then turn it back on.

I.U: But what about the sheep? It is still on my keyboard.

Me: Is it pressing down on any keys?

I.U: I can't tell.

Me: And why can't you tell? (Even as I asked this question, I knew it was going to lead to the exact answer I got)

I.U: Because the sheep is covering them.

Me: Oh. Well try to move the sheep so you can see the keys.

I.U: Okay. I can see my keys now. It is asking me to enter my user name now.

Me: The sheep is asking you? (It SEEMED like a valid question, given the situation.)

I.U: No! Windows 2000 is asking me. The sheep doesn't talk.

Me: Okay then. Enter your user name.

I.U: But what if the keyboard still don't work?

Me: We'll worry about that if it happens. Please just try to enter your user name.

I.U: Okay. It is working, but don't hang up yet. I want to make sure I can load my lotus notes and get into my mail.

(Pause) Okay. I'm in. Do you know what happened?

Me: Sorry. I haven't got a clue. But if I were you, I'd get rid of that sheep

I.U: Okay. Thank you.

Me: No problem. That's why were here. bye.

**Okay, I'll admit that I probably could have averted most of this if I had asked him if he could move the sheep off of the keyboard, but I was caught off guard, and it really didn't occur to me.***

I've had 'destroyed data' on my mind all day. This morning, I got a totally FRANTIC e-mail from an ex-boss who's quite intelligent, but not too computer literate, about what my replacement's replacement apparently did to the VAXcluster last night. I'll post THAT story later- let's just say it involves formatting every drive on the cluster without having backed up the database in over a year.

This, though, got me thinking. And sharing good laughs with some techie friends. And I hit on one that I rarely tell- it's old, and few people get it these days since nobody uses floppies anymore (except when they're taking the old 5.25" ones and folding them to go into a 3.5" drive, that is)

Here goes. I volunteered part time at a local computer store. They didn't pay me but they gave me nifty free hardware. I loved nifty free hardware. I got an Altos XENIX system, and a really cool MP/M-86 (Remember THAT?!) system, and a Sanyo MBC-550 non-PC-compatible (remember THOSE?!) that someone was so fed up with they dumped it at the front door of the store at 3AM...

Well... We had a high, high percentage of systems coming in under warranty. Most of the time, it really WAS the user's fault. We were nice guys, though, and usually didn't bill them much. One-third labor was typical, no charge if it only took a few minutes.

Far and above, the most common "warranty repair" was the dead floppy drive. We had one customer so stupid they did this NINE TIMES with nine different computers she bought from us for her company. (This woman, by the way, talked down to me for over 45 minutes because SHE was an IBM certified field tech! More on that a bit below.)

This error of errors, was simple. Common luser misconception: "If it was tricky to install hardware they wouldn't make it so easy to take the cover off." No, you dolts, they make it that easy to take the cover off so we don't hate you more than we already do... last thing we need is to spend an hour taking apart a computer like it's a dishwasher or something else that thankfully you are only stupid enough to break once a year instead of every #$%^ING WEEK.

Well, this is in the era of the RAM jump. When we started having massive numbers of people upgrading to 512K or 640K. And they were drooling over things like VGA, Sound Blasters, and the like. Mind you, they're adding these things to the 8088s we sell that don't have hard drives. But floppies are still popular, so even the 286 and 386 lusers #$%^ this one up too...

Simple afternoon. Call spouse from work, ask spouse for money, get bright idea to stop at the computer store on the way home and buy hardware to install. I cursed the fact we were open until 8: the idiots didn't get there till 5:30, presumably because they were too stupid to come up with an excuse to lengthen their lunch hour so they could do it then. We ask if they need it installed, "No, I know how to use the computer, I can install it." This is a ritual. We smile, nod, PRAY it isn't a system we sold, and all burst out laughing the instant they leave- knowing they're gonna be back.

Miss IBM Repairbitch^?^?^?^?^?person (am I alone in the UNIX world in getting ^? when my term is set wrong instead of ^H ??) follows the pattern of so many others. Walks in, SLAMS computer on table (ow) and demands a refund. We find out the system is 3 years old and somehow refrain from asking if she's insane, and instead, me being about the only one there who can hold his temper- or laughter- for more than 2 minutes, I deal with it. Mind you, I'm twelve, and look 10. She was INSULTED. HIGHLY insulted.

I ask the problem. "I want to talk to someone who knows what he's doing." "Ok, fine. Test my knowledge." "What's the speed in MHz of a MicroVAX 2 processor?" "5MHz." "You guessed." "Am I guessing it's called a KA635 too?" She turns red, and shuts up- for now. The hassle restarts when I asked her if she did anything to hurt the floppy drive. "What do you think I am, stupid?" (Not YET, lady.) "No, Ma'am, but the system came from us, and we always like to know about possible recurring problems so we can service other customers who may have the same problem you are having more quickly if they come in." (Delete 30 minute spiel from her about how we stole that idea from IBM, and how _WE_ illegally copied the PC) Of course, she did nothing wrong. "When did the drive stop working?" "Yesterday." "Did you try other disks?" "I tried every disk I own." (OOOOOOH... I'm crossing my fingers and HOPING.) "May I open the case and take a look?" "I don't think you know what you're doing." *sigh* At this point I sort of lose

it. "I'm the on-duty tech, Ma'am. Either I open this case, or you put it back in your car and leave." She grumbles, and OKs. Takes me 10 seconds to get the case off- and I'm wondering that only 2 screws hold it on, there should be 6. I know immediately THIS one's been opened before. (We didn't BOTHER with warranty seals. Customers in Rhode Island are too stupid to put the screws back. We had a machine brought in held together with WOOD SCREWS.) "Ok, I found the problem." "That fast?" *yelling* "HEY, JOE! GRAB ME THAT TOOL WE USE TO UNPLUG AN UPSIDE DOWN FLOPPY CONNECTOR AND PLUG IT BACK IN RIGHTSIDE UP!" Laughter in the extreme from the back. She laughs, looking relieved, and says, "Well, that's a relief. Glad to know all my disks will be fine." I stare at her. "Ma'am, you said you work for IBM?" "Yes, I'm a field engineers. I fix PCs." "And you don't know what you just did to your disks?" "I didn't do anything. It was the cable."

At this point I /seriously/ freak this bitch out. I'm autistic. If you shock me or upset me enough I walk to the nearest wall and start smashing my head against it. Not the usual slam-head-on-desk. I've left cracks in drywall. I stop banging, calm her down, and she says, "Oh. I should have known, my brother's Autistic." (Gee, guess computers aren't your only stupidity, lady.) I then proceed to painstakingly explain to her that on a standard floppy drive, one side of the connector is all data, and the other side is all ground. I paused, and let that sink in. She says, "Um... what lines did I set?" (Wow, she knows set/clear for binary. Ok, I'll give her a quarter point.) "Drive select, write enable, write data, seek to track zero." She starts crying.

You know what pissed me off? I dealt with this at least once a day. I've never in my life seen a 5.25" drive without that key notch cut into the connector- and I've only seen TWO floppy cables that had a plug to match it!!!

We can laugh at the users for this one... but we really have to blame all the morons who design hardware and stuff and don't use decent keying... You think the floppy cables upside down are bad... Do you know how many people #$%^ up P8 and P9?

Oh, and the last point of note. Every time I saw this happen in a two drive system, drive A was reversed, and B was fine. But they'd always be back later in the day complaining drive B ruined all the disks they put in it... Do you have any idea who are smart enough to read the DOS disk label that says "PUT DISK IN A: TURN COMPUTER ON", yet stupid enough to, after ruining 3 DOS disks this way, try to boot their LAST COPY from B?

I work as an engineer in a small plant. Often the Help desk people ask for my help at a users desk when they can't find the problem or the user seems to be lacking in understanding.

I recently called the help desk about a problem and was told ' The intern figured out the problem with the keyboard you sent down'

The boss of the machine shop had called to say his login would not work. Different things did not help the problem.

This went on for a few days and he started to just use another computer. The boss was a two finger peck typer.

A few days before a shop technician had left to take anothor job. The intern figured out that many of the keys on the keyboard had been moved from the normal spots. No wonder the login didn't work. How about that home row.

I work for the Saint Louis Science Center, in the Cyberville section. One of the areas is a LAN setup with over 30 internet- enabled computers for visitors to (ab)use.

We do have a monitor program that locks certain types of content, such as porn, etc.

G=Guy At Comp

ME=Me

G: Hey, you! You purple-and-tan!(All SLSC employees wear purple shirts and tan pants. It's our uniform.)I'm having comp trouble!

Me:(I go over to him) What's the problem?

G: I can't get to this internet site.

(I look at the page: "Blocked By (insert block program name here)." The adress bar says hotnudechicksxxx.com or something like that.)

Me: It seems that the webpage you want to look at has been hacked. Try another page. (I was giving him the benifit of the doubt, that where he REALLY wanted to go was pagejacked.)

G: No, I REALLY want to go here!

Me:(figuring that he wanted to go here) The site you selected seems to be a porn site by the name. We don't let people go to sites like that, so we have a block up... sorry.

G: But... um... it's not porn! Turn off the block!

(Continues for about 5 minutes.)

Me:(fed up with this lying) Try this site.

www.crayola.com

(I type it into the address bar and hit ENTER)

I work as a supporttechnician at Swedish Cablemodem-ISP and I got this call yesterday:

C=Customer

M=Me

M: XXXXXXX - support, welcome.

C: I cant connect to the Internet.

M: What's your accountnumber ?

C: XXX00000.

M: Ok, which Leds are lit up on your Cablemodem ?

C: The first and second from the left (power, status OK).

M: Not the one all the way to the right (Link)?

C: No.

M: Ok, there seems to be a problem with your networkcable, could you plese see to it that it's properly connected to the modem and your computer ?

He now goes away to check the cable.

C: It's plugged in.

Now I'm about to tell him that his networkcable is faulty and needs to be replaced, when I'm interrupted by him:

C: By the way, the cable I got from you (standard twisted-pair networkcable) didn't fit into my computer.

M: ???

C: Yeah it didn't fit in the back, it was too large. So I went to "Telia" and got another one and it fits.

Now I get him to go into the system and I pretty soon find out that he hasn't got any NIC, but an PCI internal modem. He has got a cable for a ISDN-modem and connected it backwards to the from the cablemodem to the PCI-modem... and he cant get CONNECTED, wonder why ???

I eventually got him to go to the nearest computerstore, bring the cable he got from us and get a NIC that fits the cable. (I didn't bother to explain any further.)

During a meeting with the managing director of a 30 person Uk company to discuss a system upgrade the subject turned to E-mail. I had proposed the installation of a proper e-mail server and system wide e-mail to the desktop rather than a single stand alone machine which is what they have at present

The MD stated that it wasn't worth doing as e-mail would not catch on - businesses much preferred fax machines.

After two years as a computer geek, I finally have a story worthy of submission...

For the past seven months I've been providing hardware and OS support for

IBM AIX and Sun Solaris boxes. I am still learning UNIX and not yet used to

thinking like an end-user, which probably explains why this customer's error

slipped by me. The customer called because, after doing a full backup and

then a mksysb (AIX bootable backup), she rebooted the system and it

wouldn't come up. She "says" the system hung at "Please wait, loading

software" so they turned it off and back on. It was hung there again when they

called our help desk. I called the customer back and verified that all they had

done was reboot the system. I have her shut it down again, and it comes up to

the same spot and hangs. Now I'm thinking the hard drive has gone south, so I

open up an IBM service call, explaining to the customer that we may have to do

a full restore on her system, but that we want IBM to check the hard drive first.

The customer calls me back an hour later -- IBM wants her to reload from the mksysb,

and they did not come out to verify the drive. So I call IBM to find out why they

don't think it necessary to check this disk drive out... and learn one tiny little

detail the customer "forgot" to tell me. When she rebooted the system, the mksysb

tape was still inserted... and when the menu said to press 1 to begin loading

software, she did... and when she realized what she had just done, THAT'S

when she shut down the system.. while the mksysb was writing to the disk!

Lucky for her, her system had two logical volumes, so they did not lose any

data and were only down a few hours. As for me, I've learned to be sure I have

ALL the facts before I place another service call!

I've been doing tech support for 10 years. Every now and then, I have to put a call into a Telco or ISP. Some of these guys are wizards, and you just love talking to them. But every now and then, you get a bonehead who knows a Sony Playstation better than a PC. And if it doesn't say Micro$oft......

A few weeks ago, one of my customers lost their Internet connection. I called the Business (aka Advanced) tech support line for the ISP. The Tech asked some basic questions, then (asked what the problem was. I explained that I was unable to ping any thing on the Internet, even though the ethernet connection was coming up fine (DSL Internet access). I'd done a tcpdump, and I could see traffic on the link, such as ARPs. This seemed to confuse him "What's an arp??". I suggested maybe it was a routing problem, and then he asked what OS I was using. Linux, I said. Oh, we don't support linux. That's OK I said, I do. He asks "do you have a Windows 95 PC you could plug in??". I explain that this box was installed 6 months ago, and has always worked until now and nothing's been added, changed or deleted. He asked me to reinstall the win95 PC we used when we installed the DSL(He just doesn't get it). I explained that we never had a win95 PC...we used the linux box!!

After a few more mumbles about Win95, he told me to call back when I had found a win95 PC. So, I hung up, gave it about 15 minutes and called back. I got a different tech this time. It turns out that the DSLAM had been down the night before, and, after looking into it, they reset the routing on the gateway...bingo!

So, it's not always the person calling the help desk who's a clueless idiot with no concept of technology.

I work for a helpdesk company where we support about 100+ companies and most of the calls we get are in the realm of relitively normal software and hardware questions. Our organizational structure is set so that most of the accounts go to one group who front-ends the call and transfers those issues which require more specialized knowledge to groups who are designated as specialists in certain support knowledge, ie. hardware, networking, operating systems, etc.

One day, I get a call from one of our front-end techs, who is calling to ask a question, as she has a rather strange issue. Apparently a gentleman had called in earlier requesting help with his modem. At least, that's what was in the original ticket. He was now calling back as the person who had entered the ticket had mis-typed the information and the issue was quite different than the ticket description.

The front-end tech explained what the user wanted in this way. He wanted to know if there was a program available to make his computer dial a certain number, repeating the call until a person on the other end picked up the line.

The reason for this?

So that he would be able to order World Series tickets without waiting on the line or continually calling himself.

I told our other tech to (politely) explain that if such a program exists, we would not be able to tell him what it is as doing so would be outside our contract description.

I work for a Cablemodem ISP and the other day our had a major breakdown and the Internet wasn't available for quite some time.

The situation that i describe here happened when one of our customer called in for the second time...

M: Me, C: Customer

M: Hello and welcome to XXXXXXX support.

C: Is the Internet problem solved yet ???

M: Are you at home ???

C: Yes.

M: Can you connect to any site ?

C: NO...

Needless to say the customer didn't call again that day...

I work for a large ISP in a Small Country (NZ) on the night shift.

When we aren't taking call we get to answer customers emails.

We just got this one the other night and I am still trying to figure out how he sent it as he is NOT an ADSL customer.

Email received:-

Thanks for your prompt action on the connection problem I had with mu

email. T spoke briely to the technician this afternoon as he worked on my

fauly. My email is now connecting fine.

But my Telecphone is now quite dead. No dial tone. I'm asuming

something has happened during the work on the phone line this afternoon

Of course I can't ring telecom to let them know. Could you pass this message on for me?

i'm a lab consultant at a big university (given how prestigious it is, i really have to wonder how some of these lusers were ever accepted as students).

a couple of days ago, this lady came in. apparently in the whichever beginning class she's in they're learning how to pipe commands to each other and she had to do something like cat (filename) | grep (stuff) , something along those lines. so she comes in

and says, "excuse me, but when i type it in, it tells me there's a broken pipe, and the | (points to screen) is broken in the middle, how can i fix it?"

wwaaaaahahahahahahaha

While working for a University in the north of England, i had a call to see a professor who was having problems connecting his Psion cable to his desktop.

Well, he would. He was trying to connect a 9-pin connector to a 25 way socket!!

He thought if he shoved it in the middle of the socket it would work ok....??

Moral of the tale?

If it doesnt fit....IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO!!

I work for a computer help desk for a large chemical company in the U.S. We get all kinds of users from the "what is a mouse" user to the "know it all" super users. We frequently get password resets because users either forget or need new passwords. I went through the usual security measures to verify the client and gave her a temporary password of "computer". Just to make sure, she asks me if that is spelled "ter". I said yes and she tried several times and ended up locked out of her account. I unlocked it and had her try again. Still the same problem. I unlocked again and then listened real close as she whispered what she was typing - C U M P U T E R. I almost fell out of my chair. Needless to say i wish they had a spell checker for the password prompt!

i allways herd of that tech tale, asked the customer to

click on the my computer icon on there desktop and they

couldnt find it even checked under there keyboard... and

all its veryations, well today it became real for me! today

i got a call,

Me: Please right click on the my computer icon on your

desktop.

Customer: i can't find the my computer icon.

Me: look around on the screen its there, probly in the uper

left hand coner.

Customer: No its not there, i looked all over my desktop

even under the mouse.

i falowed by asking the customer to hold.

i figured if they couldnt find it even after checking under

the mouse it was an OEM problem and sent them back to the

maker of the computer.

A few years ago, I was providing telephone technical support for a CAD product that shipped on five 3.5 floppy disks. One morning I received a fairly mundane "walkthrough" call. In other words, the user was not actually having a problem, he just wanted a hand to hold while installing the product. It's a good thing, too.

We had progressed nicely, inserting the first disk and running the setup executable. Then the fun began.

User: Okay, the computer is telling me to insert disk number two.

Me: That's normal. Do you have the second disk?

User: Yes.

Me: Insert it into the floppy drive and press "OK".

)Much fumbling heard at this time.

User: It's not working.

Me: Have you pressed the OK button?

User: No, I'm not there yet.

Me: What is the problem?

User: The disk won't fit into the drive.

Me: The first one fit, right?

User: Yes, but this one won't.

We then tried several things, including making sure the disk was right-side-up and wasn't being inserted backwards. I was quite puzzled, and asked the user precisely how the disk was being impeded.

User: There's not enough room left in the drive.

Me: You did take disk one out first, right?

User: No. Should I?

I swear I'm not making this up...

My cable internet provider deleted my account, it took their tech support 1 week and 7 phone calls to figure out they'd deleted the account, had given my modems mac number to another customer. It took them another week to come install another modem and then another 24 hours to provision the modem. Every time I called them they would say they had no record of any problem with my account, and try to get me to go through all my tcp/ip settings with them. I think the silliest solution offered was that maybe I didn't have enough ram, I'd been using the cable service for 2 months, and I have 320mb, I hope that's enough.

This is a tale of which I am proud to have stuck out. I get a call from a customer with a small NT network....I must mention that he is a foreign gentlemen with whom I have a lot of difficulty in understanding what he is saying...

Cust: "None of de workstations can login man"

OK, first thing I check is that the Server is on and running OK, check event viewer for any possible probs, NIC etc etc. I start to think there is a hub problem.

Me: "Ok, can you see the hub?"

Cust: "No"

Me: "Its next to the server, what does it say on it?"

Cust: "Nothin man".

Me: "What? theres nothing written on it all ?"

Cust: "No, man, nothin."

Me: "Are you sure, is there any wording?"

Cust: "Yes man, Comapaq"

Me: "Ok, do you have a row of lights on it?"

Cust: "Yes man, green and some orange."

Me: "Ok , I want you power off the hub"

Cust: "Ok, I've turned it off man."

I hear the server power off.

Me: "What did you turn off?"

Cust: "The small box man, like you told me"

Turns out he had turned the UPS off! We get the server back up.

Me: "OK, can you see a hub next to the server?"

Cust: "No man"

Me: "There must be one. Is there another small box there?"

Cust: "Yes, man."

Me: "OK, what does it say on it?"

Cust: "Nothin man."

Me: "Theres nothing on it at all?"

Cust: "No man."

Me: (with a feeling of Deja-Vu) "Is there any wording on it?"

Cust: "Yes man, Compaq Intelligent"

Me: (with a sense of relieve) "OK, power it off and back on."

To cut a long story short, the hub wasnt the problem, someone had changed the subnet mask on the server!

My freshman year in college, I owned a computer that could only be described as evil. I'd bought it from a small shop that put together custom computers out of what turned out to be really low quality components, and wound up spending as much in replacement parts for it as what the system cost in the first place. I suspect the help desk secretly cursed my name every time I called. But I managed to fix most of the problems with it eventually on my own. The only one I couldn't solve was its network connection.

The college I go to uses a FORE ATM network, with network cards that cost more than the rest of my computer (really). And this network card really didn't want to work with my computer. Perhaps it was the fault of the evil computer, but the tech support wasn't much help.

I mentioned to the first tech who came out to troubleshoot it that my computer had a Cyrix processor. He replied, "Well, that's your problem. The FORE ATM cards only work with Intel processors." I couldn't convince him to even take a look at it - he was dead certain that the problem was caused by my owning a Cyrix processor.

So, I go out and buy a genuine Pentium chip, and swap processors. I wasn't terribly surprised that the problem did not change at all. So, I called tech support again.

Luckily, they did not send out the same tech this time. They sent two technicians, who reinstalled a bunch of drivers, checked configuration settings, and were still stumped. So, one of them decided to take the cover off and rearrange the cards in the hopes that they might work better in a different order(!). He rearranged the cards and tried to start it up. This time, the machine seemed to be dead. No lights, nothing. The tech had no idea what was wrong.

I told them they might as well remove the network card now, because I would go and get a different computer for next semester if they couldn't make this one work. So, they left, leaving me with a dead computer with the cover removed.

Once they left, I decided I might as well put the cover back on. When I started to put the cover back on, I found out that they just hadn't plugged it in solidly. The cord seemed to be in about the right place, but it was just barely hanging in the socket, not really connected to anything. Aren't the techs supposed to remind users that things work better if plugged in, not the other way around?

After that semester, I bought another computer, and gave the one I'd been using to my brother. It gave him a couple years of trouble-filled service, until he decided to sell it to a used computer shop. The computer shop owner swears the power supply expired in a cloud of smoke as soon as he turned it on.

That thing was cursed, I tell you.

While working at an ISP as a tech support person, believe it or not, on occasion I dealt with an idiot. One evening a gentleman called up and wasn't able to browse the Internet. I checked all of his settings and everything seemed fine. I verified that the city he was dialing into was functioning fine as well. I decided I would then completely reinstall his network settings. Everything was going well. We removed everything and re-added the protocols he needed. I asked him what OS he was using and he told me Win95. I told him he would need his CD and he got it out. After clicking OK, it prompted him for the CD. I told him to go ahead and put it in and click OK. He did and it told him it could not find the file. I told him to give it a second to see if the Comp hadn't recognized the CD yet. We wait a few seconds and it does the same thing. I verified that it was in fact a Windows 95 CD that was in his CD-ROM. His .cab files were not on the hard drive so I was kind of baffled. I explained to him that this is a weird thing to happen. I didn't think the CD would be bad. He gets rather unhappy at MY OBVIOUS IGNORANCE and says "I'll let you talk to my daughter..." I say OK, and wait for his daughter to get on the line. She answers and I explain to her what we're trying to do. I ask if the Windows 95 CD is she says "Yes...then says quickly after....should it be closed?" I paused for a few seconds to make sure I heard her correctly...I then ask..."Do you mean the CD-ROM?" She says "Yes." I paused for quite a while marveled by all of the ignorance in that house at one time. We all got a REAL nice laugh out of that one.......

After having been an avid fan of “Bill’s” tech support people for 8 years, I finally got to spend my hour in hell. Friday morning got up checked my e-mail at six no problem. Checked again before I went out the door, gave up after five or six tries to connect to the POP3 server. Figured it was down for some reason. Used the same dial in connection at work a couple of times, Internet fine, no e-mail. Checked Friday night same deal. Got up Saturday morning, and when I couldn’t get into e-mail, I decided to go to online tech support. They asked a bunch of questions, and had me recheck a bunch of things I had already checked and then basically told me that they couldn’t help me. Spent about 30 minutes. So I called phone tech, got through in about 10 minutes, and the tech informed me that my account had been canceled. (Why couldn’t “chat” support have told me that?) Told me to call Accounts. Spent 5 minutes, had to give credit card, figure out which one I used, they had no record gave my login name, found it, and sure enough the account was canceled, but gave no reason. (Remember I can logon to their server and use the Internet), at this point we were cut off. So I called in again. Got an extremely RUDE man, wanted to start at the very beginning, wouldn’t even listen to what I was trying to explain, and couldn’t understand my login name even after I spelled it slowly three times (it’s very simple), When he blamed it on the phone connection I hung up. Call Number three. Got a very nice Lady, she apologized to me for the previous man. She checked my account and sure enough, it had been canceled the day before. After several minutes of checking, it turned out that my six months were up on Friday. No warning e-mail, letter, phone call nothing

Being a sort of nice person I submitted the following to the “chat” support

(names have been omitted)

Question: RE: ticket #

Tech: Hello Pat. Welcome to Interactive Online Technical Support. I am Tech, your online, live Technical Support Engineer.

Pat: Hi. I got the problem solved, and thought you should know.

Pat: It turns out that my account had been canceled,

Pat: How come the “phone tech” people know this and the “chat” tech people don’t?

tech: Could you please let me know in detail the issue you are facing?

Pat: I give up read what I just wrote

[Pat - user has disconnected]

tech: Our chat session will now be closed. Please take a moment to fill out the online survey that will appear in a separate window. We appreciate your feedback.

tech: Pat, I regret that we could not conclude our chat. If you need further assistance, please come back and visit us again. For your convenience and future reference, you can refer to the same ticket number. You will receive by e-mail a detailed transcript of our chat. Thank you for using MSN Interactive Online Technical Support. Goodbye and have a nice day.

[tech - user has closed this session]

The tech didn't even read what I wrote...

I worked for the computer dept in a government office. One day, one of my users from an agency that we support stopped me in the hall this was the conversation:

him: Does Damon Miller work with you?.

me: no, we don't have anyone by that name.

him: well, I keep getting e-mails from him and I thought maybe he worked with you.

me: no, he doesn't work with us. what are the e-mails about?

Him: he keeps sending me e-mails saying there is a problem with e-mail. I get a lot of e-mails from him.

me: (light dawning)...could his name possibly be daemon mailer?

him: yeah....that's the guy

This was a conversation with favorite user (an elderly lady) in the Windows 3.1 days:

User: (not identifying herself) We got a biiiiigggg problem here!!!!!!

Me: (recognizing voice immediately) Hi Wilma, what's going on this time?

User: Pat put a disk in my computer and now all my icons are gone. I told her not to put it in but she did anyway.

(user sounds like she's been violated)

Me: Wilma, can you click 'Window'

User: ok

Me: Now click 'Arrange Icons'

User: Well, now they're all back again!

Me: Good, you're ok then.

User: I told her not to put that disk in there!!!

Me: That didn't cause your problem, Wilma

User: Well, I'm not letting her near my computer again.

(This was the same user who complained about getting out of memory errors in Win 3.1 and when we went over, we found that she had 13 copies of MS Word open)

I work as a student computer consultant for a rather large university. My job mostly involves fixing minor problems, such as users who can't seem to figure out TCP/IP or realize that a phone cord won't work to connect to an Ethernet jack.

One day I was doing a housecall for a student who said they couldn't connect to the internet. I showed up with my driver disks, all set to fix TCP/IP. When I get there, I find that user has a laptop computer. I notice cables lying everywhere, and plug them in. I take a quick look at computer and realize there's no ethernet card. User asks if I need any disks, pulls several disks out of laptop case, and ethernet card. I put in ethernet card, boot up computer, and all is good.

I work in a large Canadian ISP which offer dialup and highspeed for businesses and one of our agents got this weird call.

TS=Tech support

C=Customer

TS=(company name) my name is (anonymous) how may I help you?

C=I have dialup connection and I was told I could use a splitter to use my phone and modem at the same time.\

Obviously you would think that saying "Unfortunately this is not possible because you are on a dialup, it would only be possible with highspeed connection." would make the end of the call but instead this makes the member very irate.

TS=What the @#$@# are you saying? I was told that I had a highspeed dialup connection?

C=No highspeed means a connection with a special modem that doesn't dial to make a connection and is only available in certains area. It is much more expensive.

TS=What type of service am I paying for! I was told I wouldn't need another line to use my phone while being connected. GIVE ME YOUR SUPERVISOR!

and the call was going on for more than 20 min as the member could not grasp the concept that using a splitter on the phone would not let him use the phone while being connected because they are on the exact same line. He thought dialup 56K modem was the same as Highspeed DSL.

I was recently given a service call where the customer complained of her computer beeping constantly. Immediately I suspected a stuck key on her keyboard but, upon arrival to her office I was faced with a very unusual scenario.

When I arrived, she was at her desk and her PC was making that all too familiar beep. I asked her to allow me to take a look at it. She got up and left her cubicle to talk to one of her friends. She was a rather large woman so she had to get out of the cube before I could get in. I sat down in front of her PC and, about the time my hands reached the keyboard, the beeping stopped. I tested the keyboard and found everything to be working properly. I then had her to test it herself. About the time her hands touched the keys the beeping started again. I just happened to notice that her rather large breasts were lying on the spacebar when she tried to use her computer.. I had to think fast. How do I handle this situation. If I tell her the truth, She gets upset, my boss gets upset and I'm out of work.. Then it came to me. I asked her if I could check it one more time. She again left her cubicle to talk to her friend. As soon as I sat down, I reached and raised her chair up about 2 inches. I then asked her to try it again. "It works great" she said. Then she asked the tough question. What did you do to fix it? I thought quickly and replied, I just had to make a minor adjustment. She never suspected anything and I managed to keep a straight face at least until I got out of the office. Then I completely lost all control..

I just recently graduated from high school, and I finished off my senior year with a couple of 6-credit Cisco classes. We were put in a 1940s high school that the local vo-tech had moved into, and told to set up shop there. We had the entire third floor, with most of the original walls down, but just a few standing. We were put in charge of the local school district's tech support calls, as well as other things to "further our network knowledge". I got the complete range of calls like "how do I format a disk", "how do I fix my own PC", and "do you know who set my car on fire?" One day, our instructor had a great idea - install networks to the auto shop building. We had a few problems.

- The instructor drilled blindly into a wall and missed a 3-phase service line for the welding shop by about an inch.

- The instructor drilled blindly into a wall and took out half the phones.

- We were told to work with the existing network. It'd be cool if there was one. We wound up sending data over category 3 telco wiring.

And it goes on. I'm just wondering - WHO DIED AND MADE THIS GUY AN INSTRUCTOR? I had seriously doubted some of these things I had heard on here until I got this guy. Next, I'm going through my call file for the funny ones.

I'm becoming more convinced that you should try to identify the potential competent users from the lusers and not teach the lusers anything.

If I have to explain to one more user that you cannot fix a database indexing error by running ScanDisk or Defrag, I am going to go stark raving mad.

I can't take credit for this. I found it in an old copy of PCGAMES edition 1 1994. You may have heard perhaps. Here goes:

There was this friend of mine who worked in a computer shop. It was first thing on Monday morning and he'd only just opened the shop for business when this bloke rushes in looking really angry waving a game box in his hand.

"I bought this game from this very establishment on Saturday." he roared, throwing the box onto the counter, "and I'm afraid to say the disks don't work."

"Oh dear," replied my mate.

"Oh dear indeed." the man continued, growing redder. "In fact not only do the disks not work, but they have broken my disk drive too. The drice was fine before I started to install tis game and now it just makes a grinding sound ande refuses to work."

My mate tried to calm him down, explaining that the chances of a a floppy physically breaking a disk drive were a billion to one, but this bloke was having none of it. It was only when my mate opened the customers box and saw the mangled mess inside that the awful truth began to dawn.

"Er." interrupted my mate, "How big - roughly - would you say your drive slot is?"

"I don't know - this PC thing is all new to me." blustered the man. About 3 inches I'd guess..."

"but these disks are for a five and a quarter inch drive." said my friend.

"I know." said the man. "I had to fold them in half several times until they finally fitted and even then it was a tight squeeze."

Thats it. As I said you may have heard it. I thought it was funny.

I had an experience working for a company that had several different types of computers. We wrote software for them, and continued support as long as the customer would pay. We were renting office space in an industrial complex. The computers we happened to have in that office were 5 PCs, 1 Vaxstation, 2 VTX (sorry can't remember exact name - xterms), an AIX box and a PDP-11.

At some point the AIX box kept needing work on it. The hard drive would go. And various other problems. Then one day the circuit breaker blew. The office complex reset it. And it blew it again. Then the electrician came to our office and we started counting Amps of all our equipment. Everything except the PDP was on the one circuit breaker! No wonder the circuit breaker blew. And probably caused some damage to the AIX before that.

Comm Customer Stupport how may I help you?

Yes I was wondering if i change my email account to Jane.Doe to Jane.Smith cause i got married recenty do I still get my email from the other email account even tought I change my account?

M'am if you change your account name it opens a seperate account.

Oh, I see, i think. So do I get my mail or not?

No M'am. YOUR account will completey change and will not be the same.

Ok thank you.

At a Canadian Helpdesk, we had a call from an (ab)user who was having problems with one of our dialout programs. Upon answering the call, the user immediately began shouting and cursing our software for it's lack of connectivity!!

Conversation was as follows:

User: "This software isn't dialing out, I want someone to personally come down here and install it for us, cause I've had enough!!"

Tech: What sort of problem are you having with the dialout?

User: It doesn't dial, and all I get is a click sound.

Tech: Ok, can you try dialing out for me right now?

User: It's going to do the same thing, all I get is #%#@ from you people!!

Tech: Sir, let's try and dialout, and we'll monitor your connection from our head office.

User: Fine! (Starts program, but no response)

User: See, it's still doing the same thing! I've had it with this s/w. YOU GET SOMEONE DOWN HERE NOW! I MEAN IT.

Tech: Sir, we should be able to fix this pretty simple.

User: NO! #%!@^&!% way!.. *Throws the phone across the room*

Tech: *Waiting for someone to pick up the phone*

User2: Um... my boss doesn't seem to understand what the problem is, can I help?

Tech: Yeah, could you check the phone line for me please?

User2: Sure!...

Tech: *Waiting*

User2: Um... it wasn't plugged in, so I plugged it in now.

Tech: Great, try dialing out

User2: Thanks that worked!

Tech: Glad to be of some help

User2: But the phone is busted.

Tech: Sorry we don't support phones.

The moral of the story? Use a phoneline with a modem, before busting your phone.

I work for a local computer company and just got a call from a lady asking why Dell would put such a slow modem into her brand new laptop. After asking her what speed it was, she answers "56k". Um, well I ask her if she has DSL or a cable modem, and she says no. I have to explain that 56k is the fastest thing around right now, and she tries to argue with me, telling me that there are faster modems, while professing she doesn't know anything about computers.

She then tells me that her other computer needs to be upgraded and wants to know how much it'll cost. I ask her how old it is (to get an idea about what we can do for it) and she tells me "six months". Hmmm. I tell her that she pretty much has to bring it down for the techs to figure out what she has and what we can do with it. She wants to know why she has to do that, and I make the analogy of taking a car to a mechanic to "make it faster". Who knows how much it'll cost, right? How fast? How much money you got? So she tells me that she doesn't want to bother with "all those wires" and wants to know if she can bring down her laptop down instead. After banging my head on my desk a few times, I try to explain that we have to have the computer in order to look at it, and she just isn't getting it. Finally I have to tell her, "look, if your son is sick, do you bring your daughter to the doctor?"

I had to setup and send a PC computer out to a remote user, so I reformatted the drive, installed the apps, and hooked a modem to it.

After we shipped it out to the user, he called back and said that the modem was not being recognised. After running through the proverbial stack of troubleshooting tips and tricks, he still could not get his modem to be recognised by the PC.

Simultaneously, I was setting up another PC to use an ISDN modem. When it came time for the PC to recognise the modem, it refused to. I called over my boss, who called in our main PC tech (I'm a Mac person) who tried, again, all the tricks in the book, and a few that were not written down anywhere. Modem was connected to the comp, powered, and the drivers were installed, but the comp refused to recognise the modem. So the PC tech decides to switch the cable connecting the PC to the modem.

LO AND BEHOLD!

The sucker worked.

So, I call the remote user and told him that he should go out and get a new modem cable (reminder, the modem cable we sent out with the original modem was brand new). Sure enough, he goes out, buys a new cable, hooks it together, and the bloody thing worked.

Now tell me, what are the odds of running into two bad modem cables, one straight out of the box?

I'm the head midrange-system DBA for a large health care network (I won't say which one, to protect idiot confidentiality), and some of the stuff I've seen would make anyone petrified of a hospital stay.

You wouldn't believe how careless some people are when dealing with hospital systems. We've had cleaning staff unplug production servers to get an outlet for their vacuum cleaners... People tripping over power cords and knocking them loose... One facility has an admin who reboots RISC servers by pushing the power button off, then pushing it on again... Another hospital has to keep its servers locked in a cabinet because otherwise dumbasses turn them off ("well the light on the front was blinking so I thought that meant I should")... The crazy, paranoid MIS staff at yet another center who are EIGHT releases behind on one of their vendor applications because they refuse to let anyone else touch their system and don't know how to upgrade it themselves...

Today's was a new one, though: This afternoon a production server I'm responsible for backups/restores on lost power. No big deal, we get it back up, I restore, I bring the application back up. Not 15 minutes later, it's down again, and I restore it a second time. Why'd it go down, you ask? It seems some engineers (yes, engineers) were updating / testing the fire alarm system and had been switching the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) off and on to refresh them... without bothering to check if any, oh say, production systems happened to be plugged into the same UPS. They did this TWICE.

Got plenty more, but I'll save 'em for later.

I'm not sure I can top the one about the sheep on the keyboard (October TechTales) and it does make me wonder ... seriously ... but I've known things almost as strange. So, here's one of them.

I don't do tech support in the usual sense but I do often supply answers for tech support people. A few days ago, I had a call from a friend with a question about a client's system. While we were talking, he was opening the case on another client's computer where the client wanted to install a new motherboard / CPU for an upgrade. The subseqent conversation went something like this:

B: Ben (me)

R: Ron -- a qualified and competent hardware/software technician

R: Man, you aren't going to believe this ...

B: Huh? What's happening?

R: I just got the case off and ... yeah ... I think it is ... but you won't believe it.

B: Try me, I've seen weird before.

R: Not like this.

B: So?

R: Well, it looks like all the cards have been sealed in the slots -- looks like beads of hot glue.

B: Hot glue?

R: Right -- and the DIMMs are seated the same way.

B: Sounds solid ...

R: Ya -- and so are the power plugs ... and the ribbon cables for the drives ... and ... you know, there isn't a single card, plug or connector in here that hasn't been glued down. Even the CPU fan mount is hot-glued.

B: Hey, could be worse?

R: Yeah? How?

B: I heard about one shop that used duct tape.

R: Sounds like a mess, yeah, but why worse?

B: Hot glue isn't conductive ... duct tape can be ...

Needless to say, Ron decided against trying to upgrade the system ...

I was doing contracted support for the government and,

believe me, some government workers are just like the

stereotype.

User 1 called in with a bad keyboard. I went to work on

it and it wouldn't function at all. I rebooted and got the

POST code for dead keyboard so I went to get a replacement.

After I plugged in the new one, the user said, "I can't

understand what happened. I just cleaned it." He had carefully

removed each and every keycap, POURED DESK CLEANER IN TO IT,

and replaced each keycap...

User 2 was notorious for his foul temper, particularly toward

his PC. I'll admit that he ran in to some weird problems

but his reaction was always to punch the doo-doo out of the

system and HOLLER. At one point, I was in our service center

between calls and I could him hollering about his PC from

way down the hallway and he was coming our way. Despite

being dressed in a full suit and pumps, I climbed under my

desk. When he came in, I poked my head out and told him

that I wouldn't come out until he talked nice to me. He laughed

so hard that, from then on, I never had much trouble with

him.

Finally, we have to use standard Word(IM)Perfect and Lotus

1-2-3 which are on a par with Microsoft for buginess (if not

worse). When I went to help a user who frequently had

problems with these two apps., his Division Director was in

his office. The user started railing at me about the bugs

and demanded that I fix them (no patches abailable). I told

him that, if I could fix all of Word(IM)Prefect and Lotus's

problems, I sure as hell wouldn't be working as a government

contractor...

I've been on both sides of tech support, and recognize

there are a lot of really skilled techs out there. But

when you get a bad one, there's nothing more frustrating.

I bought a digital camera awhile back, choosing the model

I did because of its mentioned USB support. However when

I opened the box, there was a little black sticker over the

USB connector. Check the camera manufacturer's (starts with

a "P", and not Panasonic) web page, find a FAQ explaining that

only cameras of this type manufactured in 2000 support USB,

and mine was made in 1999. Shoot, kinda frustrating, but okay,

maybe there's some way I can exchange it for a more recent one.

I e-mail tech support, and that's where things get interesting.

I swear to God I got a freakin' robot answering my e-mail. It

replies back stating that this series of camera doesn't even

-have- USB support. What the...? Okay, I search the site again,

find the same FAQ as before, double-check that it refers to the

right model, yes it does. I add to the case, stating that their

own website says this particular camera has a USB connector, and

even go so far as to include the URL of the FAQ (ON THEIR WEBSITE)

where I found it.

Send it off, wait about an hour (fast reply, I'll give them that),

and the droid on the other end apologizes for the "USB glitch", and

then SENDS ME THE EXACT SAME CANNED RESPONSE A SECOND TIME. This is

after I've pointed out that their previous response was incorrect,

USING INFORMATION PULLED FROM THE COMPANY'S OWN WEBSITE!

Just goes to show, there aren't nearly enough good techs out there.

Some companies have to resort to hiring automatons, or monkeys, or

in some cases even one-celled animals (stimulus, response).

Great site, keep tellin' it like it is!

One afternoon a customer called our ISP's local office frantic. He had just bought his first computer and was online for the first time. When he called he was out of breath and it took a minute to calm him down. When I finally got him calm enough that he could tell me what his trouble was, he said that he wasn't sure what he had done wrong, but that his computer was telling him that "Windows was shutting down" and he couldn't stop it and he couldn't afford to buy a new computer. After a quiet chuckle, I explained to him that he had done a good thing in shutting his computer down properly and this was a normal message.

Hello,

Many years ago I worked at a help desk for a state agency helpline. We used Honeywell Level six machines which acted like an extended mainframe. The equipment was the size of a refridgerator and had a disk drive the size of a large filing cabinet along side. On top of the disk drive was the console, in the lower right corner was the word 'traffic' the word would flash as data moved two and from the site via the dedicated data line. One day the site was expierencing slow response time and then crapped out altogther. I asked the client if the traffic was flowing and was the indicator flashing. After a long pause she came back on and stated that she had opened the window and stuck her head out to check the traffic. And sure enough it was not moving as was backed up halfway down the block from the traffic indicator (light) !!!!

We had a new girl helping in the IT department and she was instructed to do the several things of which one of them was changing backup tapes.

The systems were located in 19" racks and reasonable full.

After a couple of days I noticed that the backups had not run properly and I checked several things.

The system worked fine, I could backup and restore small files but every morning the system had an error message that no tape was found as it was ejected.

I asked the girl whether she did this correctly and she said that she thought there was no problem.

I still could not figure it out....

Next day same thing but during the afternoon I was working on a voice system in the next cabinet and I saw her changing the tape.

Tape went in and stayed in, she checked the console and returned to close the door.

Sofar everything was fine.

Then she left and I heared a little noise, the tape was being ejected.

I opened the door again and pushed the tape back in and waited. The tape stayed in so I closed the door again and got on with the other job.

Again the sound of the tape being ejected and then it struck me.

The girl, just not as tall as I am had moved the tapeunit more to the front of the cabinet. By doing that the eject button was pressed everytime the door was closed......

No need to say that we moved the tapeunit to a lower shelf.

Do basic tech (don't laugh, it pays da bills, hmm?) for an ISP that shall remain anonymous. None of the calls we get are usually very technically challenging (as I said, 's first level). When we hit a problem that goes beyond our demarcations, we have to escalate to Sr. tech.

Anyway, I get this call from an elderly couple of PC-Newbies (shudder) tag-teaming me on speakerphone (double-shudder). Their particular problem was that Netscrape would crash on loading. So, right into the call, they insist on reading the entire error. Thankfully, I was able to cut them off half way through it, and told them to reboot the machine. about a minute and a half later, they tell me that it had crashed again. This was odd. I told them to reboot. 90s later, crash. I frowned, and got them to reboot again. Same thing. then it hits me...

Me: "Um, do you have NS starting up automatically on bootup?"

Male: "No, I just opened it up as soon as it was done"

--Fair enough, I didn't tell them NOT to do so...

Me: "Ok, I need you to reboot again, but this time do not open NS."

Male+Female: "Ok!"

*90 seconds later..

Male: "Uh, it crashed..."

Me: "You opened it again, didn't you?"

Male: "Erm, Oh yeah, I wasn't supposed to, right?"

Me: "Right."

Male: "Sorry..."

*90 seconds later

Male: "Ok, we're up..."

Me: "Ok, I need you to--"

Male: "Sorry, it crashed again..."

Me: "Did you open it?"

Male: "No."

Me: "Well then how--"

Male: "My wife did."

-Grrrr

Me: "Ok, I need you to reboot one more time, this time NOBODY touch it, we have to do something first..."

Male: "No problem!"

Female: "Alright, sorry!"

*90 seconds later

Male: "Ok, we're good to go!"

Me: "Ok, I need you to go to 'My Computer'"

Male: "Alright..."

Me: "Ok, now to C-drive, then to the 'Program Files' directory."

Female: "Done!"

Me: "Great! Now just go on over to the Netscape folder..."

Female: "which one?

Male: "Netscape honey..."

Female: "uh... Ah yes... I see now!"

Me: "Uh--"

Female: "I see what's going on!"

Me: "Ok--"

Female: "This one?"

Male: "Yep!"

Me: "?"

-Insert long pause

Male: "Uh, it just crashed again..."

I still wake up at nights from this one... Troubleshooting was impossible. I was pretty sure that NS was cack'd so I just sent 'em on up.

Ugh.

Hi

At our job the other day our Helpdesk-IT, department detected a virus and send at netsend to all machines, so that the could delets all e-mails containing. Since I already knew what E-Mail it was, I smply deleted and worked on. Approximately 2 hrs later I receive a mail from Helpdesk-IT distributed to everyone, that it was safe to switch on the computers. If I hadn't disobeyed, all computers in my department would probably still have been switched off :-)

Got a call from a stock broker at one of the largest financial firms in the US and abroad. He tells me his problem is with his e-mail. I asked him what program (Outlook 2000) and what his problem was. Very disgustedly, he says "I'm not getting any!"

Now, I swear, I was in work mode and never gave it a thought! But there was a deafening silence. He says:

I can't belieeeeeeve I just said that!

We laughed for a looooooooong time!

One early morning, i received a call from a customer asking me about our software. After instructing him on the phone on what to type in the DOS prompt, i told him to press return to execute the command. He said that nothing happened. I ask him if an error occured and he said it showed "Bad command". I asked him to repeat the command over the phone, and i found out he used the forward slash "/" instead of the backward slash "\". I told him to use the backward lash instead. To this he replied, "How could I reverse that on screen" (He's probably thinking of 'holding' the forward slash and turning it so it points backwards).

My roommate came home from work and told me this one:

Tech: This is _______, what can I do for you?

Lady: I just got my new computer and I can't get it to turn on...

Tech: *sigh* OK, is the power cord plugged in?

Lady: The one in the back?

Tech: yep.

Lady: Yes.

Tech: You have a monitor right?

Lady: Of course.

Tech: OK, is the monitor plugged in?

Lady: Yes.

Tech: Do you know what the power button on the tower looks like?

Lady: Of course. I keep stepping on the pedal, but it just won't turn on!

Here are a few things that sales people have replied when asked technical questions:

Cust: Why is the computer beige

sales: to help dissapate heat

When asked about the saftey of cell phones different replies included:

sales1: It only transmits when you talk

sales2: it uses a satellite on the opposite side of the phone to your head

When asked about the differences between OnDigital (a terrestial digital TV network) and BskyB (a satellite digital TV network)

sales: Ondigital comes through your aerial and BskyB comes through the air.

The moral of this - only let people who know about the technology sell the technology

I do email support for a major computer company. We support one of their products (sorry can't mention name). Below is the problem description from one of our really confused customers emails that needed help.What kind of help...Well you decide for yourself.We didn't know whether to send a fowl language statement or what =0)

problem_description : I TRIED DOWNLOADING THE DRIVER AND COULD NOT GRT OUT OF THE WORD NARRATIVE. SINCE I HAD DOWNLOADED INFO. I WAS AFRAID I HAD TOO MUCH INFO SO I UNINSTALLED PROGAM. WHEN I REINSTALLED AT STEP 7C I CLICKED NEXT INSTEAD OF NEXT. I THEN PRESSED FINISHED. HAVE NO ICON AND COMPUTER SAYS NO PRINTER CONNECTED. HELP!

WHEN I PUT DICK BACK IN TO TRY AND REINSTALL, NOTHING HAPPENS.

I work at a small time computer store where build custom computers for local homes and businesses. I went out on a call because this one man said he couldn't get his computer to work. After his neighbor had asked him several questions about the computer he was advised to do a system restore. He couldn't get that to work so he called us. When I got to the location, the man's kid's were doing a rock video in the yard as some kind of school project. I had to walk around them and go to a side door because of their mess. The man told me that his dogs were in the computer, so I left.

I have my own little computer shop here in a small college town where I deal primarily to the local students. Myself being a student has to entertain himself to releive the stress of all the PEBKAC's (problem exists between keyboard and chair), I went to the bar after I closed up my shop. I got back home to install a new HDD in my computer. After I had it physically installed I booted up the system, and for some frickin' reason it wouldn't recognise the new drive (probably...well OK, I had them both set to primary master..). Of course since I had just returned from the bar and wasn't quite thinking straight, I couldn't figure this out.. Somehow I had unplugged the power cord from my CD-ROM in the process (but I didn't realise this yet). I was shutting down the system to recheck the physical connection of the hard drive, and, while the system is still shutting down, notice the CD-ROM is unplugged, so I decide to plug it in...frying the motherboard. The blue spark was kinda cool...just not inside my computer. I've promised myself to never work on any computers while ..umm.. inebreated.. again.

I work for a certain large company ISP (the same one that puts out a certain operating system). I got a call today where we credited her too much, as in we accidently payed her too much money and she was concerned. Generally, if we make a mistake or a person is displeased, we credit them (and usually hear about it being too little), but in this case, we credited $150 in error and she wanted to complain! So I gave her our written address and she is now going to write a letter. Go figure!

Her: Hello, ####. Yes I'm having trouble logging into your web site.

Me: Ok, lets just take a quick look at your account. Whats your name and phone number?

Her: blabla, blabla

Me: ( at this point i look at her account to make sure she is signed up and that her account is active, and not cancled, etc...) Your account looks fine, do you remember your password for our site?

Her: Is it... eh, blablabla?

Me: Yeah, lets try this one more time ok?

Her: Ok, hold on, nop your website still isnt comming up! Whats wrong with this i pay for it and i cant use it!

Me: Well lets just make sure of somthing, are you online?

Her: Yeah i have aol.

Me: Are you online now?

Her: Do i need to be?

I got alot of calls like this, but she took awhile to get online, and to find how to access another web page, i have no clue how she got to our website to start with to sign up!!!, anways i got alot of calls like this, all of them from AOL!, go figure...

I work as desktop support where we do basic troubleshooting on computers and printers. Last Friday, a member of my group got a call from someone complaining that their network printer was printing not only in color (it is a laser jet), but it was printing 2 things at the same time!! So the guy stopped up and looked at the printer. He couldn't figure out why the print outs were so messed up until he looked in the paper tray. Someone put used paper in the paper tray.

A couple of hours later, we get the same call, the same user, the same problem. Someone else went up and explained to the user (whose whole job is to make sure the printers are full of paper and printing) that you can't put used paper into the printer.