Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

ME: Thank you for calling (major isp) this is Chip, can I get your email address, please?

HIM: It's kennethclemons@(isp)

ME: And can I get your name, please?

HIM: (irritated voice) I just done told you!

ME: You told me your email address which in this case happens to be your name. What can I help you with today?

HIM: (defensively) Well, I didn't know they have to be the same.

ME: They don't have to be the same-- that's why I asked for your name afterwards.

I used to work with a tech who was very arrogant about his level of knowledge, and also very opinionated; in fact, his behavior was at times beyond baffling - he'd been fired from a tech support job at a local cable ISP for recommending a competitor's service. While working at that same company, after a member of upper management outlayed a new project that the company would be working on, the tech in question raised his hand and asked, incredulously, why they were doing that, because it was a stupid idea. Needless to say, this guy was a real piece of work.

So I got a kick out of this story, which happened when this potatohead decided to apply for a job across town (which I ended up applying for and getting, much to his dismay):

There business in question has double doors, one of which is pretty much always locked. Our hero comes for his interview, in the middle of the day, and tries the left door, to no avail. So, does he try the right door? No, that would be a stupid idea. Instead he stands there, while customers are milling about inside in plain view, and while the staff has a good laugh at his expense, until finally one of the customers leaves, at which point he either realizes his idiocy or counts his lucky stars that someone left when they did. I'm guessing the latter.

I grabbed a call where the customer reported the backup

was failing. I telnetted into their system and saw the

error report was indicating a failed tape drive. This

site does not have CPU maintenance, so I called the

customer to refer her to her hardware support. "That's the

same thing you told us last week when Sue called in", she

said. "Do you still think it's a bad tape drive?" "Has

anyone fixed the tape drive?", I asked. "No." "Then,

yes, it would still be broken."

I work for a major insurance company [think 'good neighbors'] in customer service. Thpugh this is not about a customer calling in, but about a co-worker.

Our office is in the process of being downsized, and we are the last 2 here, basically holding fort until the office lease is up. In our ample hours of nothing to do, my co-worker has decided to work on organizing the equipment list, merchandise and players for the youth football league he coaches for on weekends. Nice man, but other than what little he has to know to access the rhumba program and a few other proprietary programs we use is pretty clueless. I have been working with Micro$oft Office for about 10 years now, in it's various versions.

So, to alleviate my absolute boredom, I agree to help him learn more about Office and how it can help him organize his league. Not only does he actually listen, and perform well - he REMEMBERS how he does the functions he needs to use. He is actually gettig rather good at manipulating the various components of Office, he was immensely proud of the season program he made and sent to a print shop and actually played around in Paint and designed a logo. Be still my beating heart!

Why can't more people be like him? I usually get stuck in an office full of people who can't even change their own ink cartridges for the printer sitting on their desk! Last person I shared an office with kept turning off her computer without shutting down and never understood why I didn't have to scandisc every morning. She called IS to report my 'puter as having startup problems.

Love the site, I point people here and to Userfriendly.Org when they ask what I read for fun online ;-)

A tech was calling on behalf of a client. The client was getting an error -310 in our software. This usually means that the index files are corrupt and we need to delete the index files. However, I need to find out what directory our program resides. I tell him to look in the shortcut.

He says "C SLASH". Now most Windows Computer Techs should know that it's a BACKSLASH. So I tell him to go to the Command Prompt. I tell him "Type c COLON BACKSLASH, which is above the enter key."

He comes back to me with an arrogant attitude "I'm well aware of that"

WELL EXCUSE ME, MR. TECH. If you knew that was the backslash, then why the hell did you say SLASH when I asked you the first time????

OK, only a short story, but one that left me a little bewildered to say the least.

OK, I am trying to get one of our clients (we provide support for software used in health spas) to open 'My Computer'. I explain that normally (and I have seen some god-awful abuse of desktops in my time) it is on the top left of the screen. There is a pause on the other end of the line. Then the question- "My left?"

Another short story (either I'm lazy, or our clients have the power of condensed idiocy)...

ME: Double click on "My Computer"

CLIENT: From here?

OK, here is a prime example of user rudeness:

ME: What appears to be the problem?

THEM: My computer seems to be freezing.

THE VOICE IN THE BACKGROUND: Sounds like you're telling him his job.

ME (a little narked by this): I heard that. Is software locked up now?

THEM: I don't know. You tell me.

After more of the same, I realise that I am not going to get any useable information. I am tempted to ask them to shut the computer down and sit in the corner. Instead, I use the stock support tools of shutdown and scandisk.

Not really a story, more of a confession. I have been working in support now. I have found myself speaking in luser speak. Monitors are now screens and PCs are now modems. Sorry...

I get a call from a customer who just signed up with our service. He was freaking out that his home page is not our homepage but the homepage of his prior ISP. I told him to type in our address in his address bar. After typing www I hear the keyboard getting pushed away pretty hard. "I am just too frustrated, I am going to cancel" he said. "Sir you are only 8 characters and a mouse click away from having your homepage set correctly", I inform him. "I don't care, my other ISP was easier than this, I was online within five minutes", he replies. "Sir you are online, you just need to set your homepage", I ensure him. "That sounds too difficult, I want to cancel now", he tells me. So I transfered him to our customer care number to try to get him to stay ... too bad I am not allowed to transfer to AOL :-D

I run a small Computer services SOHO here in michigan. About a year ago I was called to schedule a service appointment to reinstall the customers Printer and a serious lack of speed. When I arrived at the customers home, the woman answered the door in a sheer nighty after waiting on the porch in 20 below temperatures. She had me follow her to the computer room. This wasnt odd in and of itself, but she was all sweaty and flushed, which gave me a pretty good indication of what she had been doing before she answered the door. She left me with a written list of the two things needing done and what files needed saving and practically ran out of the room. I sat down at the desk and started checking for correct drivers and checking cables. After about 5 minutes I had the drivers reinstalled, and started cleaning out temporary files, and downloaded images off their 10 gig Harddrive. There were at least 8 gigs of files scattered everywhere including folders on the desktop (notice I didnt say folders linked to the desktop) During this time I can hear loud screams and what sounds like a bed bumping against a wall. Not being totally stupid, I knew what was going on in the bedroom. I tossed in my new Linkin Park Cd and plugged my headphones into the labtec speakers and jammed to that for another 15 minutes. At that time she came out, tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around to her being fully clothed, showered and looking like nothing had happened, but with a chesire cat grin on her face. She asked me if everything was all set now and if there were any problems, I stated that it was all done and had no problems whatsoever with it. She asked if I had heard anything or seen anything and I straight faced told her no, I had plugged in my headphones and started them as soon as she left the room, and that I was done. She had me reboot the system, print off a page on the printer, and wrote me a nice check with a $50 bonus. So apparently keeping your mouth shut and acting like you didnt hear odd things will get you more money

. What temporary files were there? A ton of temporary internet files and pictures downloaded from domination websites. Odd what you find out there in smalltown america.

This was sent to me in an email one time. Not sure who this happened to, but its funny :)

Customer: "I installed Windows 98 on my computer, and it doesn't work."

Tech Support: "Ok, what happens when you turn on your computer?"

Customer: "Boy, are you listening? I said it doesn't work."

Tech Support: "Well, what happens when you TRY to turn it on?"

Customer: "Look, I'm not a computer person. Talk regular English, not this computer talk, ok?"

Tech Support: "Ok, let's assume your computer is turned off, and you just sat down in front of it, and want to use it. What do you do?"

Customer: "Don't talk like I'm stupid, boy. I turn it on."

Tech Support: "And then what happens

Customer: "What do you mean?"

Tech Support: "Does anything appear on your monitor? I mean, the TV part."

Customer: "The same thing I saw last time I tried."

Tech Support: "And that is what?"

Customer: "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Tech Support: "Yes, sir. What is on your screen?"

Customer: "A bunch of little pictures."

Tech Support: "Ok, in the upper left corner, do you see 'My Computer'."

Customer: "No, all I see is that little red circle thing with the chunk out of it."

Tech Support: "You mean an apple?"

Customer: "I guess it kind of looks like an apple."

I work a helpdesk at a major university and I receive my share of stupid calls, but this one takes the cake.

M(- Me

P(- Professor

M: Helpdesk...blah blah blah

P: Hi, this is Prof. so and so, I have a problem with my mouse.

(now right there I know that the prob is just that the mouse is dirty and all he needs to do is clean it)

M: What exactly is the problem?

P: Well, the mouse doesn't appear to be making contact with the mouse pad.

(now i know that the problem is that its dirty, but of course you try and telling something reasonable to anyone)

M: Okay sir, just take the mouse ball out of the mouse. Do you know how to do that?

P: No no no. The mouse is fine. It's my mouse pad, its defective.

(this is where i put him on hold and bang my head on the desk)

M: Um...sir, mouse pads are not prone to breaking. I really think that the problem is with your mouse.

P: Listen, you can't determine that from over there, I know its my mouse pad.

M: Okay sir, what would you like me to do about this?

P: Well, can you fix it for me?

M: No sir, we do not fix mouse pads. But Office Depot has a fine selection from which you can choose from.

P: REALLY!! Great, thanks for you're help.

I can just imagine him running to Office Depot and picking up a mouse pad, bringing it back, experiencing the same problem and calling the manufacturer of the mouse pad to complain of deficiency in there product. (hey, everyone is entitled to a good laugh :)

-Jeff

I work on a helpdesk, and one day we had a user who wanted us to help her move her PC to a different desk in her office. We had no one available that day, so she said no problem, she'd do it herself and call if she had problems. A couple of hours later, she calls.

"I've moved the computer, connected it all back up exactly like the one next to it, but the keyboard doesn't work."

When we went to have a look, she'd tried to connect the AT connector on the keyboard to the BNC connector on the network card. And bizarrely, in it's own strange way, it actually fit!

A customer called me today saying "I got an error message saying 'see event viewer for details' so I went to the event viewer and cleared it out. That didn't solve the problem. What do I do now?"

I consult for a company doing desktop support. One of my users is one of those big-shot, top executives with an ego the size of Jupiter. Anyway, I get urgently emailed and called (despite the fact that I've reminded these clowns over 400 times to call the Helpdesk) saying that his BO (Name shortened to protect the foolish) software needs an emergency upgrade as specified in an email he just got. I tell them to call the Helpdesk. So I get paged for the call and finally go up. I follow the instructions on the email but pause when I can't find the BO directory. Turns out he never had BO (quit chuckling over the pun!)

I explain this to his secretary who says "well, maybe he needs it installed." At that moment, Mr. Ego walks in and I explain that he doesn't have software to be upgraded.

"I don't?"

"No!"

"Well I don't know what you people put on my system!" and runs out of the room.

The sad part is that I got suckered into this job and thanks to the downturn in the economy, I have nowhere else to go. *sigh*

Oh yes, and let us not forget the emergency ticket because Outlook wasn't working. I get there. Works fine. Oh, ok, so he's having trouble sending to Hotmail addresses. Oh, ok, he's having trouble sending emails to his dad. It's working fine for me but, Oh, ok, only when you send attachments. Someone please explain to me how this is a business need? I tell him that Hotmail is run by Microsoft and you can't trust it to work. He bought that.

One more pointless visit, different Exec. Always putting in emergency calls because his printer would stop printing. It was a weird problem that required I install W2k Service Pack 2. Ok, so all is well. Get another emergency page. Everyone's up in arms because it's not printing again. I go up there and turn on the printer.

Ever wonder what you did in a past life to deserve this?????

We've all heard about the idiots who type "click" when told to right-click. But what about this one that I heard from someone?

Tech: Now, right-click on My Computer.

User: Hang on a minute, I'm having a bit of trouble...

Tech: What kind of trouble?

User: Well, it's difficult for me to write so small, and my pen won't work properly on the screen...

Tech: *groan* *bash* *bash* *bash*

And people wonder why techs think users should have to get a liscence to use a computer!

A fellow student at uni told me about this one.

He was working in tech support at a local ISP, and one of his collegues got a call that went something like this:

Tech: Northnet technical support.

Cust: Why have you put porn all over my computer??!! The desktop is porn, all the icons are porn, and the sounds are porn!!!

Tech: Listen, ma'am, we can't put anything on your computer.

Cust: Then who did?

Tech: In order to put something on your computer, they would need to be AT your computer to do it. Now, who else uses the computer for internet access?

Cust: Well, there's my husband, but he was furious when he saw what had happened.

Tech: We can rule him out then. Who else?

Cust: Let's see, there's my 16 year old daughter....... and my 14 year old son....

Tech: I think we've found the culprit.

Cust: BILLY!!!!

(click)

I don't think I'd like to be her son after that.

Here's one I heard about somwhere else.

A customer with a thick Asian accent calls up internet tech support complaining that his WinModem keeps hanging up on him. The tech informs him that WinModems are notorious for randomly hanging up on you.

The customer then says: "Salesman say 'WinModem, good modem'."

The tech replies "WinModem, !@#$ modem!"

This soon became the tech department's new motto.

Some time after this event another customer calls up, and says:

"Yeah, I've got a problem with my WinModem. The (!@#$ thing keeps hanging up on me."

Tech: "Your problem can be summed up in four words"

The tech then signals to the other techs who all press the mute button on their phones, and chorous:

"WinModem, !@#$ modem!"

I work at a small ISP... I'm the only one working tonight, no one is calling for help, so I'm just reading some tech-tales here to pass the time.

Then The phone rings:

Me: ***** helpdesk, this is ****, how can I help you?

Cust: I'm trying to get online with you guys and I'm not able to.

Me: Are you getting an error message when your trying to connect?

Cust: Yeah, just a minute here and I'll try to connect... Ok, I've got my username (mumbles something I can't understand) and my password here, so I click on connect.... Dialing... Verifying username and password. Error 691! (Now he starts with the "this is not my problem, it's always yours!!!" attitude) SO, what's going on here, are there some problems going on with your servers or what?

Me: Whats your username? (thinking: new customer not setup yet)

Cust: it's fred59....(doesn't want to take the precious time to say the rest of the numbers) It's in your files!

Me: (do a search for "fred" and find it.) Ok, error 691 is a username and password error. (Which you would have known also if you read the rest of the error message!!! Anyway, I spell username/password to make sure we both have it right. It is.) This should all be lower case with no spaces also.

Cust: Ok, well I took off the CAPS LOCK now and retyped my password. Connecting, Dialing.... This is taking so long! I should have gone with that cable internet service! I wouldn't have to deal with this and it would be faster (blah blah blah, etc...) Ok, I'm on... I'm connected. (now customer feels bad for being rude the the poor tech that helped him after he was the stupid one who had the CAPS LOCK on!) I'm sorry, ma'am, for troubling you with this.... Thanks for your help.

Me: It's ok, bye.

I work for a labor union. I just got a phone call from an agitated member, asking if our e-mail was fixed yet. "We've been sending e-mail to your www.unionname.org address and it tells us 'address not found'!"

I hadn't been aware of any problems, but maybe they were misspelling something. "What specific address are you sending your e-mail to?"

"'www.unionname.org'!!!" she replied testily.

"But ... that's not our e-mail address, it's our website address," I explained.

At least she realized and laughed at her mistake.

Quick background on the Klez worm: It selects random email addresses from your computer to which to mail itself. It then randomly selects a different address to use in the "From" field of the email. So, basically, when you receive a Klez infected email, it didn't come from the person you think it did. Corporate email servers often bounce infected emails back to the sender and tell them to clean their system. With Klez, those warnings go to the wrong person. Clever...

So, this guy at work gets a bunch of emails telling him that he's infected with a virus and he needs to clean his system. Of course, he really wasn't infected, but he didn't know that. Well, he ponders all of this for a minute and then notices that he got the first virus warning email on October 6th. So logically, he assumes he must have gotten infected then. Good thinking there, but here's kicker: How does he "clean" his system? He does a global search of his hard drive and DELETES EVERY FILE WITH A DATE OF OCTOBER 6th OR NEWER!

Needless to say, Windows 98 doesn't like that. Can you say, "Format and reinstall" boys and girls?

I am a catch-all PC/LAN tech. Hardware, software, printers, and whatever else. I have some words of wisdom for the others.

1. Never feel invincible; too many users have screwed their computers so bad, the only solution was to wipe it and start over. That's when they say,"I coulda done that!".

No, ma'am/sir, you couldn't.

2. When going from Novell to MSAD, don't expect ANYTHING to work properly, ever again.

3. Techs like doughnuts and coffee, mostly doughnuts.

Dilbert IS so true.

4. Some days you screw up more than you fix.

5. There is no satisfaction like the blank unknowing look on the other tech's face as he/she realizes that they can't fix it either.(This is after they have hustled you away with great fanfare and the "MOVE" command.)

6. People really are that stupid, yet they are alive. Does not compute... Go figure.

7. Knowing how to fix computers is kinda like being famous, everybody wants you, NOW!!!

That's all I have... #!

*Sigh*

This happened to me a month or so ago, and shows how completely computer illiterate some of us are.

We have this friend of ours, he's around 60 or 70, and wanted to buy a new computer. So me, my dad, and my mom help him pick one out, and get it set up. Well, a little while later, my dad comes to me and says "Eric, (XXX) just called. He wants to know how you highlight things in an email. You know, give it extra emphasis"

... I'm like "HUH??" O...kay. Thinking this that my friend just wanted to make something bold or change colors of text or something along those lines, I said, "Okay, lemme call him."

"NO! DON'T CALL HIM!!! SHOW ME FIRST!" my dad screams (okay, not scream, but you get the idea). I say, "Um, he has a question. Why can't I just call him and ask him what's his problem? Why do I have to show YOU?" (The person that has no clue what the problem is?)

Well, I eventually ended up having to show him, so I opened up hotmail (that's what I set my friend up on) and attempted to change it. Things went terribly terribly wrong terribly terribly fast.

Dad: NO! Don't use hotmail! Use my Yahoo! Mail!!! USE IT!

Me: Um, I set (XXX) up on a hotmail account. I need to be using hotmail so that when I give him the instructions, it'll actually be CORRECT.

Dad: Um, okay.

So... I open hotmail, compose a message, and made some text bold. My dad's says "That's not what he wants! He wants it highlighted!!!!"

Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "WTF??? It's not even you that wants the help! It's (XXX) that wants the help and he's the one that knows what he wants." So okay, maybe he wants the color changed.

I change the color. "NO! That's not it!"

I go to change the color, and I highlight the text, and am ready to change the textcolor when my dad says... "YES! THAT'S IT! HIGHLIGHTING IT! Tell him to do that!!!"

Me: Ohhh.... you mean THAT highlighting. Dad, that's not going to work.

Dad: WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WON'T WORK??? You just did it! You highlighted it!!!

M: Um, it doesn't work that way. Highlighting is not permanent. When you email it, and the person receives it, it won't be highlighted.

D: YOU'RE WRONG! I'M RIGHT!!!

Then he stomps off to "play around" on his own. My dad's such an @## that way, he always think's I'm wrong and he's right... go figure.

Anyway, my mom's staring at us, and is trying to explain to my dad that it won't work that way, and my dad's getting angrier and angrier.

FINALLY, after my idiotic dad finally says that I could call our friend, it turns out that he didn't even want to do anything in his email. He wanted to do something in Microsoft Works.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST LET ME CALL HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!

I'm a secretary at a rather large (azure) computer company. One fine day a few weeks back, one of the managers I work with was in my office giving me the details of some meetings he needed set up when another one of the "guys" comes in, looks at the network printer, then starts opening and shutting drawers, removing paper, slamming them shut, looking at the printer again, taking out more paper, etc. Finally, I had to excuse myself and ask, "What are you doing? If you need paper it's in the cabinet, bottom shelf."

His reply: "It says "Load A4, any tray. You must have put too much paper in it."

Me (sighing): "Someone's trying to print a file from Germany. (We're in the US.) Just hit the "Continue" button when it does that." (Reaching around him to hit the button as I speak.)

Him (as the printer starts printing): "Are you sure? It still sound like it means there's too much paper in it."

Me (pointing at the printer): "See?"

Him: "Oh."

I've heard of reading between the lines, but that took the proverbial cake. BTW, this is the same guy who demands that I call the Help Desk for problems he's having with his computer without giving me any concrete information. ("I'm getting an error when I try to print. Call the Help Desk and have them fix it. Now.") any relevant system passwords and/or the actual laptop. He has more faith in my telekinetic abilities than I do.....

I work on an IT helpdesk for a large telecommunications compoany in the UK. Part of my job is administering and resetting passwords. One of the applications used by our customers involves a password change in the following format oldpassword/newpassword/newpassword. After around ten password resets and about forty minutes trying to talk a confused middle aged engineer through this process, it turned out that he managed the old password bit alright, but was then typing "forward slash new password forward slash new password"...........

When I used to hear tales of techs I thought they were bored people just making it up. Oh boy! There really ARE people who write "click" on their computer, there really are people who...well, you know.

My boss refers to his computer case as "the hard drive"

My wife used to delete tons of files when she would get "low memory" errors.

A friend I do computer work for is one of these people who freak out if anything isn't exactly the way it was yesterday. She always calls me up with an "Emergency". The other night she shut off her computer, curned out the lights, locked the door and went to bed because her computer said she was doing something illegal.

She also gets upset when redirected to a porn site. She's sure the FBI is watching her.

Her best friend is my Stepmother, and my step mother is the opposite. When her and I are troubleshooting from 12 hours across the country, she follows instruction, is patient, knows she doesn't know anything about computers. Amazing!

My sister on the other hand is reallyy picky. Everytime the Blue Screen pops ups, she calls me to fix her computer. She can't understand that life is imperfect, and sometimes computers just lock up. "Why won't it work like moms". Well, because mom ONLY checks e-mail with hers, never dinks with it, aleaves it running and gets defragged, disk checked and rebooted once a week when I go visit.

My father in law argued with a company that sent him a USB cable for his new computer and printer, because his old computer had 'the other kind' and figures since it was a bigger cable it would be better.

So these stories here are great! I love calling tech support on occasion just to do what they say, get a problem solved, and make at least this one call a good one today.

Just wondering why when some people post on here they put their name at the end of their story but don't tick the box marked "I want credit for my story"?

So you end up with things like:

Hope you enjoyed my story.

Joe Citizen

Thanks to: Anonymous Tech Supporter

Or recently I've seen people mask their name in the story but have checked "I want credit for my story".

eg:

Hope you enjoyed my story.

Joe C_t_zen

Thanks to: Joe Citizen

Come on, we're techs (mostly). We're supposed to know what we are doing.

I've been doing tech support for about seven years now. The tales I could tell....

Here's the wonderful start to my Monday morning. I just got a call from one of my problem children. I work in Chicago, he works in Milwaukee. A few months ago we sent him a new laser printer so he wouldn't have to walk the 20 feet to the office printer. He's always complained that it "doesn't work". Today he calls and before I can even say hello he lets loose with a stream of obscenities (wish I could just hang up but he's pals with my boss so that's not an option). He starts going on about how "this f*cking printer is a piece of sh*t" and "it has never G*dD*amn worked", etc. I spend about two minutes trying to calm him down and get him into the printer settings. Before I can get him into the settings I hear the printer firing up in the background. "How long ago did you send that print job?" I ask. "Oh, a couple of minutes ago". "Ok, here's what happened, the printer has been on standby all weekend. Now it needs to warm up so it can print" I explain. "Oh, now it's printing out about 10 copies of what I was trying to print". He's also a dues paying member of the "if it doesn't work the first time hitting the print button 10 times rapidly might make it work" club.

M)=Me, T)=Them

M) Hi, this is JJ how can I help you?

T) Well, I see your add says that you sell used systems.

M) It’s true, we do.

T) Do you have anything that is really really reliable, that runs DOS, and has three serial ports and two printer ports?

M) Well err… I do have some old 386 & 486 motherboards and some other stuff in the back that I could configure that way. But they only support hard drives which are of the same vintage, which I would not say could be called really reliable. I could build you something out of newer parts, and I’d have to add the extra ports.

T) That might be OK if the cost were not too high.

M) OK, so speed is not important, just reliability?

T) Yes

M) Can I ask you what these systems would be used for?

T) Sure, we use these to monitor and control a (insert a medical technical name which I can't spell, pronounce, or remember). They are kind of old but cost $400,000 each. We found that new systems running the DOS software in a Windows window is just too flaky. We need to keep them running.

M) OK, let me get back to you with some numbers.

I call back quoting some prices for some Intel brand motherboards, low end CPUs, and a really nice case with filtered air flow (really good fans) and a name brand power-supply.

I’ve serviced PCs from Hospitals, the gunk inside is amazing. Nothing cutting edge here. I want these to be super reliable, after all they are going to be basically hooked up through a magic box to people. It wasn’t all that much, the case was the most expensive part.

T) That’s more than we wanted to spend, what could you do with those 386 motherboards you said you had?

M) What kind of monitors do you have?

T) Monochrome.

M) Well, if I can come up with some monochrome graphic adapters, I’ll sell you a box like you want without a keyboard or monitor for $90.

T) OK, if that’s the best you can do.

M) Yes it is. But I’ll also need something from your administration.

T) Yes what?

M) I’d like a letter stating that the purchaser understand that this equipment is used, is 12 years old, and not guarantied for more than 30 days. That any compatibility with your intended use is solely the responsibility of the buyer. That we assume no responsibility as far as any complications arising from treatment of patients hooked to these systems.

T) Sure, that should not be a problem. I’ll get back to you.

M) They never did get back to us. I can only assume when they went to management for the letter, someone with half a brain decided that maybe since the systems cost $400,000 that maybe they should budget at least a little more than $90 to keep them running.

Or perhaps someone decided that hooking someone up to something that was running that vintage of control system might open the gates (if a patient got in trouble) and the lawyers would be the first ones in line.

Me, I if I get sick, I think I'll go someplace where 8088s aren't hooked to people.

Though I'm not in tech, I know a bit more than the average idiot with a computer, and have the logic skills to solve really obvious problems. So I was sitting in the computer lab one day, and this kid beside me was complaining loudly that what he was typing for his powerpoint presentation wasn't showing up. So I leaned over and changed his font from black to white, so that he could read it on the *black* background. Then, having the luxury of not being paid to do that, I told him what an idiot he really was.

I was working for a major automotive manufacturer (think "better idea") in 1995. My job was to set standards for mobile computing hardware and software. A new VP of IT met with me and a few of my peers to discuss mobile computing. He suggested we incorporate an external CD device with our standard laptop configuration. Keep in mind at that time a CD device was a pretty high-dollar option. None of the PC manufacturers on our standards list had provided one to us for evaluation but he said he had one at his office he wasn't using. I offered to stop in and pick it up the next day. When he handed it to me I looked at it, pushed the button to release the diskette, and handed the diskette and the external diskette drive back to him and told him thanks but it wasn't the kind of CD device we needed to add to the standards list. He was replaced the following year.

I used to work for a blue shirted electronic store as a PC Technician. Now I could go on for days about how many stupid people buy computers without knowing what they want or what they are getting but I'll narrow it down to one.

This story involves memory, DIMM' to be more exact. Now anyone that is familiar with memory knows the DIMM slot are 168-pin and have they own designated memory slots on the motherboard. Well this "DO-It-Yourself" customer brings in his system and plops it down on our bench saying that our memory made his computer not work.

First I'm thinking, um we only sell it not make it but whatever. I tell him taht since he installed it himself we will have to charge him for taking a look at it and installing the memory if he so chooses. He agrees, paperwork is filled out, I hook it up to the test station adn sure enough no power comes from the system. He leaves adn I set it to the side to work on systems that were before his.

When I do get to it the first thing I do is open the case and look inside. What I saw I have never , ever, evre seen before nor have I seen anything like this ever again. He was using a 586-based Processor with of course, a 586-based motherboard. Now he didn't have any DIMM slots on this board only SIMM slots. OK oncemore, SIMM slots=72pin DIMM slots=168-pin. So which one do you think this guy bought and tried to install? Right, the DIMM but where did he install it you ask? Well if you know anythign about motherboards, you will remember that the 586-based boards had ISA slots on them. Now I have never thought about attempting this myself but leave it to a "Know-It-All" customer to try it. He installed the DIMM memory INTO THE ISA SLOT!!!!! I didn't say he tried to install it, he actually got it in there!! I think I luaghed for a solid 20 minutes. I called everyone in the store that knew anythign about computers and had them look.

By the way, he fried both the memory and the motherboard, I didn't charge him a cent for the laugh and I took pictures of the memory int eh slot. so if anyone would like to view it email me peyoung@ucschool.org and I will gladly send you a copy.

People kill me.

Left Handed Mouse

I’m not a tech, just someone who likes to be as intelligent as possible about the machines I use and rely on. I use my mouse left-handed, and I do actually switch the buttons so that the right button is the “primary click” and the left button is the “opposite click”. One of my jobs at work is to help new people complete their computer security training so that they can be issued an account on the network. Because they can’t get their computer account until they complete the training, I usually just sit them down at my computer, go to the training web page, and let them complete it. Most of them have trouble with the left-handed mouse and get into the strangest contortions trying to make it work. One new employee was left-handed so I didn’t think I needed to explain about the mouse. I left for a couple of minutes and when I came back to see how she was doing, she said, “I’ve finished the quiz but I can’t submit it. Every time I click on the ‘send’ button, I get this strange menu.” I looked down and saw that she had her left hand on the mouse but had her left index finger stretched over to click the left or “opposite click” button. Trying hard to keep a straight face I said, “It’s a left handed mouse. You need to click this button”, pointing to the right “primary click” button. She pulled her hand off the mouse and stared at it in amazement, saying “Wow! I’ve never seen a left-handed mouse before!” I exercised remarkable self-control by not laughing and instead showed her how to switch her own mouse to the ergonomically correct left-handed configuration. Now understand she’s been using a computer for her work for over ten years, holds a masters degree, and is an ergonomics specialist as part of her job. One week later I was in her office and saw her doing the contortions with her left hand again and asked her why she was clicking the wrong button. She replied, “Oh, I switched it back. I guess I’m just used to it.” *Big Sigh*

So I am sitting in my cube, I just got off reall bad call and I was just about to take a break.

The phone rings.

Me: Thank you for calling Blah. May I have your name.

Them: It's blah

Me: And may I have your serial number.

Them: It's xxxxxxx.

Me: It looks like you are out of warantee. May I have your credit card info.

Them: It's blah.

Me: And how may I help you today.

Them: I'm stuck at this c double dot slash.

Me: type E X I T and now press enter

Them: WoW, it's fixed now.

Me: And thank you for calling.

5 dollars a key. I felt bad, but then I thought that if someone dosn't want to educate themselves enough to solve even simple problems on their pc then they deserve it.

An our customer ask us if changing her video, her screen-saver would be changed too !

I work for a ISP in australia... i thought this one may amuse some...

(m): me

(u): user

m: welcome to ******, **** speaking, how can i help u?

u: i signed up over 2 weeks ago and i havent received my setup disk...

m: ok can i have you username...

u: ******

m: ok, what we can do for u as you disk hasnt arrived is manually set this up. Are you in front of your computer?

u: no i'm at work... can u send me an email with a link on how to set this up?

m: i sorry we dont have anything like that, we do have screen shots to help custs online that you can view if u have net access at work. if you call from your home phone we can set it up for you.

u: well i cant cause i dont have a home phone...

m: (????) i sorry if you can not be in front of your computer i can not support you. If you would like i can re-send a cd...

u: no i need to set it up tonite...

m: i understand this but...

u: no u dont understand I DONT HAVE A HOME PHONE...

m: may i request how you will be connecting to the net if you do not have a phone line.

u: i have a line but it isnt working at the moment.

m: i sorry as you can not be in front of your computer i can not help you. i can send u a cd, which i am doing at the moment but that i all i can do.

u: well that a load of ****... *click*

ended call - now lmao...

This happend to me a few months ago but I just stumbled upon techtales.com today.

Keep in mind that I am a tech support rep myself so I hate when I call someplace and get the standard "reboot, scandisk, and defrag" punt the call type answers.

I was at work and my wife had sent me an email from home, our internet connection is through a cable company. I read the message, hit reply and fire it off. Not long after that I get a bounce from the cable company mail server, emial address does not exist. I figure it's a glitch so I wait awhile and try again, same thing. I then try sending mail to my account. Same problem.

I get around to calling Tech Support and he tries to get me to log into the Account Manager via the web page. No good. He generates and resets the password. No good. This goes on for about 4 tries and he decides to bump me to the next level of support. Great, I get to tell my story again. This is where it gets good.

TS: Standard opening lines

Me: Retelling story about how mail is failing to be deliverd to my account.

TS: Are you at home?

ME: No, I am at work, but I check my email from here.

TS: Are you on (cable service) at work?

ME: Yes, but it doesn't matter, I am getting a bounce from your mail server.

TS: But you can't get your mail at home?

ME: Correct, and I can't get it here either. If I send myself an email from my work account, I get a bounce from your server saying it can't find my email address.

TS: You will need to call back when you are in front of your computer at home so we can check the settings and make sure they are correct.

Now I loose it because I know he has no clue and is trying to punt me. My exact reply went like this:

Look sparky, this isn't rocket science, I am sending myself an emial and gettin a bounce from your SMTP server. There is noting wrong with my connection at home, it is something with your SMTP server.

At which point he puts me on hold. When he comes back he says:

Well it looks like you need to talk with a network technician and I will have to ask my supervisor for permission to transfer you but I don't think that will be a problem in your case.

I finally get ahold of a network technician (who had me on hold more than not but solved my problem so I didn't care) who saw that I had called earler in the day to have a new cable outlet installed in my house. The guy that processed the original order nuked my account then recreated it and in doing so nuked my internet account. The internet account is not automatically recreated.

Sometimes it's good to run a network and know how things are supposed to flow.

My business card doesn't say it, but I'm the tech go-to

girl for my company. I don't mind some of my IT duties, to

be sure, but having to abandon my real work to walk someone

through simple RTFM stuff again and again really gets my

goat.

Today I had the following exchange with our receptionist,

who's pretty clueless in general--and especially so when it

comes to computers.

Me: ...

Re: Receptionist

Re: You know how you helped me get that file last week?

(I had fished a Word attachment out of a temp directory and

put it in My Documents where it belonged.)

Me: Yeah.

Re: I can't find it.

Me: It's in My Documents.

Re: It's not there. You know where all the files are?

It's not in there.

Me: No, it's in My Documents.

Re: Come here and take a look.

I follow her to her desk, making silent throttling motions

behind her back on the way.

Re: Okay, so I open Excel...click on File...Open...

The My Documents folder opens in a browse dialog.

Re: Okay, see all these files? It's not in there.

Me: All right...

Re: So I press "Show All Files", here, and there it is.

Me: (noting the icon) And it's a WORD file.

Re: When I try to open it, I get this error...

She doubleclicks the file. Excel (quite rightfully)

complains that it can't open the file.

Me: That's because it's a WORD file. This is EXCEL.

Re: Oh. So I can't use this to open it?

Me: No. You need Word.

Re: Okay.

She minimizes Excel and starts to open Word.

Me: No, no--just doubleclick the file. That's the easiest

way--Windows knows what program to use to open most

files.

(And this is true on her computer--she doesn't know enough

to manage to mess it up and lose file associations.)

Re: Oh, uh...okay...

Me: Doubleclick My Documents...top left...there. Now

doubleclick your file. No...over more...right...

right...there.

Re: ::clickclick:: Oh. Okay. Thanks.

Now, what really confuses me is her original complaint that

the file "isn't there". Huh? Besides that, her inability

to recognize that, by and large, Word files are opened by

Word and Excel files are opened by Excel...well, that's

pretty much to be expected with her.

About 8 years ago, I worked for a company that sold electrical parts and automation equipment. One of the salesmen came to me because I did technical support for our automation division. It seems one of the salesmen (who was out that week) had set up all eight of the computers so they could use their fax modems to send quotes to their customers. The problem was that the computers and their fax machine weren't getting along.

"Does each computer have its own phone line?" I asked.

"Yes." I was told.

I went down to the sales office and discovered:

Eight computers and a fax machine daisy-chained, with the "expert" salesman's computer plugged into the only fax line. The next computer was plugged into the "phone" jack on the expert's modem, and so it went. I explained that (due to the relays in this type of modem) that if any computer tried to use the fax line it would knock anybody "upstream" off, and that they should have eight more phone lines pulled in (or invest in a line-sharing device).

The next week, the "expert" came into my office and berated me for "mis-informing" his boss about how the system was set up. I tried to explain it to him, but he was convinced that the modems worked just like thin-net and token-ring and that daisy-chaining was a perfectly-reasonable way to connect them. I don't think they ever fixed it. I left when the company was acquired by a competitor.

I bought a new comp, round about 4 months ago, maybe 5. Mostly top of the line but I was forced to skimp on a couple things due to finances.... Namely I really wanted 512k of RAM but could only get 256, and I was stuck with the lame-ass onboard vid card, since the particular shop I went to only sells nVidia products, and I wasn't going to spend 80 bucks on a TNT2, then another couple hundred three more months down the line when I wanted another.

So, after searching around, I find exactly the card I want online, order it. Then decide to take a drive over, since it's right around the corner from my work, to ask about their warranty service. Namely, whether I would be allowed to open it up myself without having to pay through the roof should anything happen. Guy asks me some questions, I basically tell him I've been working with computers since I was 8 (am now 21) and was employed for a year assembling the suckers. He said no prob, the warranty only became an issue if people experienced repeated problems that were their own fault. Sweet!

.... And not 2 minutes after he gets done telling me this and I was in the middle of asking if they were looking to hire anyone (as I'm thoroughly SICK of working stock in a department store....) in walks someone. The guy I was talking to, who was facing the door, just goes "Oh no." Apparently, this fellow (who I SWEAR looks like Ted Kazynski, only even MORE thin and skeletal) has been in 4 times in the past month. He's been trying to upgrade his RAM. Well, first thing he does is purchase the wrong type, doesn't mesh well, doesn't destroy anything but it slows the system down instead of speeding up. Then returns that, gets the right type.... Wrong bus speed. Third time's the charm, right? *bzzzz* Somehow in the LAST round of fixes, he ended up snapping off the connectors, and didn't even get to check if he had the right type. Which, he didn't.

Now, I don't know if it's just me, but after the FIRST time of me screwing up, I'd just grab the nearest clerk from the place I bought it from, have him pull up the info and get the RIGHT parts. Ohhhhh, you save about $10 from this online dealer? Well between all the shipping charges, and penalties, and labor charges for getting the problems fixed, you've LOST over $100! Oi guvaldt, maybe I DON'T wanna work there after all!!!

So, there I am, minding my own business during my lunch break, reading the newest issue of MaximumPC. (*note: don't ever read PC mags at work, or you automatically become the "computer expert") Had I wanted to talk to anyone, I would have gone and eaten in the cafeteria, but instead I hid at a desk behind a really tall file cabinet thinking I would be left alone. Suddenly, a woman I barely know pops her head around the corner and begins bothering me.

Her: "Hey you're the computer expert 'round her aren'tcha?"

BoCo: " Ummm, I don't know. I know some things."

Her: "Well I wanted to know--why does my computer keep freezing?"

BoCo: "I don't know, maybe your house is too cold."

Her: "Oh, really? I didn't know that would have an effect on it."

BoCo: "Uh, no, I was actually making a joke; nevermind.

Her: "Huh? Oh, I get it! Hahahaha! OK, sooooooo.....why does it just stop working?

BoCo: "What are you doing when it freezes?"

Her: Oh, nothing! I just come back to it after it goes blank and I try to wiggle the mouse around but it won't come back on."

BoCo: "So, the screensaver is a blank one or the Power Options turn the screen off?"

Her: "Huh?"

BoCo: "Do you use a screensaver?"

Her: "No. It just goes blank after a few minutes, but usually I just shake the mouse around when I come back and the screen comes back on."

BoCo: "Then you have a blank screensaver."

Her: "Oh, I'm not really sure."

BoCo: "No, I wasn't asking you, I was making a statement; you have a blank screensaver.

Her: "Oh.....ok? Well, why won't it come back on sometimes? Then I have to either hit the reset button or undo the monitor cable from the modem and plug it back in. Sometimes that helps, but if it doesn't, then I have to restart."

BoCo: "Well, I think I know your problem (you're an idiot), you're plugging your monitor into your modem. WAIT! How the hell do you plug a monitor into a modem???"

Her: "I don't know, I just unscrew those thingies and pull it out, then I plug ot back in and screw them in again."

BoCo: "You missed my point; monitors don't plug into modems."

Her: "Well, mine does!"

BoCo: "No it doesn't."

Her: "Oh. Well it plugs into something."

BoCo: "What does it plug into?"

Her: "Uh, you know, the modem thing."

BoCo: "No!"

Her: "Well, that's what I call it. You know, the big square thing that you put your discs in."

BoCo: "Your CD burner???"

Her: "What's that?"

BoCo: "The thing you use to make CDs....."

Her: "Oh, I can't make CDs on mine."

BoCo: "Foget the CD burner. Where the !@#$ do you plug the monitor cable in?"

Her: "The back!"

BoCo: "The back of the case?"

Her: "What's the case??"

BoCo: "The case! You know, the large box that contains all the electronics that make up your computer!" (duh)

Her: "Yeah, that's the big square thing I was telling you about."

BoCo: "Ah, I get it. Ok, what you're plugging your monitor into is the video card, and you need to...."

Her: (interrupts) "I am? What's a video card?"

BoCo: "Yes you are. You're plugging it into the video card. What that is, is...."

Her: (interrupts) "What's that???"

BoCo: "I was just getting ready to tell you, stop interrupting me. The video card is a small circuit board that sends a video signal to your monitor. It plugs into the motherboard."

Her: "The mother what?"

BoCo: "Mother. Board. That's the big circuit board inside your case that everything plugs into."

Her: "What's the case?"

BoCo: "The large square box."

Her: "Ohhhhhh, ok. Yeah, that's the thing that I call the modem."

BoCo: "Well, that's not a modem; it's a case. It houses all the electronics that make up your computer. A modem is simply a device that works like a telephone for a computer. It's what allows you to connect to the internet, fax, or make a phone call from your computer."

Her: "You can make phone calls from a computer? How do you do that?"

BoCo: "I'll tell you some other time. Right now I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with your monitor."

Her: Well, what do you think it is? I have to unplug the monitor and plug it back in, or I have to totally reset my computer."

BoCo: "Well, first of all, you should never unplug your monitor from your case without turning everyting off first. Second, if it works after you plug it back in, then maybe your video card is loose."

Her: "What's a video card?"

BoCo: "I just told you like two minutes ago. It's what sends video signals to your monitor. It plugs into the motherboard, and possibly has been unseated from the AGP slot. Have your kids kicked it or anything?"

Her: "Oh, I'm not sure....."

BoCo: "Ok, listen: turn everything off, but leave your computer plugged into the wall. Gently lay the case on it's side, and figure out how to take the cover off. (terror in her eyes) Once it's off, find the video card--it's the one that the monitor is plugged into, so you'll see it right away. Touch your power supply's cover to get rid of any static electricity, then put a thumb on each end of the video card and gently push it into it's slot. Also, make sure there is a small screw in the metal bracket on the end of it, and make sure the screw isn't loose."

Her: "Oh my god1 I'm not going to get electricuted am I?"

BoCo: "Hopefully."

Her: "Ahh hahahahahaha! You're so funny!"

BoCo: "No you won't get shocked."

Her: "Am I gonna blow anything up?"

BoCo: "No."

Her: "How do you know?"

BoCo: "Because I get into my case all the time."

Her: (dumbfounded) "Oh my god, you do?!?! You aren't affraid of hurting anything or getting shocked?!?!"

BoCo: "No. I just told you that you'll be fine, ok!"

Her: Ok, I'll try to do that then. (repeats to herself most of what I just told her) But that's still doesn't tell me why sometimes I have to totally restart."

BoCo: "That's because you're using Windows ME, and it's freezing during the screensaver."

Her: "How do you know I have Windows ME???"

BoCo: "Isn't your computer a couple years old?"

Her: "Yeah. I am using ME, I just wondered how you knew."

BoCo: "Because it's 2 years old, and I'm sure you haven't upgraded to XP (because you're an idiot) because if you had, it wouldn't be freezing like this."

Her: "What's 'XP'? ...Are you *sure* I'm not going to blow anything up?"

~ The End~

I work for a major cable communications company in their cable modem technical support department. My job is to chat with people online and answer support email.

Many times a customer will call and ask for help and then argue with me that my answers are incorrect. Usually their reasons for my being so unenlightened are pretty wrong. Here is a transcript of one of my chats. I think the first part is the customer's attempt at humor although I am not quite sure.

Melissa) Hello. My name is Melissa. I understand you have some questions. May I have your home telephone number (with area code) and primary email login so I may access your account?

BEN) yes

BEN) (***)***-****

BEN) *******@***.net

Melissa) Thanks. Can you please clarify your question?

BEN) Question?

BEN) What is the dogs name?

BEN) macho

Melissa) Yes you did contact technical support to ask a question or for some sort of help, did you not?

BEN) Pardon me

BEN) yes I did

Melissa) Ok

BEN) I'm slow with this typing

Melissa) No problem

BEN) My com1 setting

Melissa) Yes?

BEN) was set at about6900 baud

BEN) I set it at 115200

Melissa) Ok that is telephone modem - that has nothing to do with your cable modem

BEN) I then set the advanced

Melissa) Sir, that is telephone modem - that has nothing to do with your cable modem

BEN) Doesn't it go through the uart?

Melissa) no - the telephone modem has absolutely nothing to do with your cable modem or your access to the Internet through *** ***.

BEN) Any way, when I was done, the internet conection sped up

Melissa) Sir, that was purely coincidental.

BEN) The receive buffer

BEN) I bumped it up to it's highest seting

Melissa) Sir please listen to me

Melissa) Anything you change in the telco modem settings will not effect your speed with the cable modem.

Melissa) Is there anything else I can help you with today?

BEN) no, thanks

Melissa) Thank You for choosing Cox High Speed Internet!

This is an actual chat question i handled today:

"I need to send an e-mail message to ireland. The address is ***********@******.net. Is their a country code that I have to append to the address to get messages to go through?"

Yes, and long distance charges will apply as well.

This isn't a story about tech support, but I still think it belongs here.

I used to rent a room from an elderly lady in San Clemente, California. We lived in a condo in a primarily elderly community.

One day my normally sweet landlady comes to my room and tells me that I need to check my computer because the sound of it is bothering the neighbors. She explains that they are a couple that will not hesitate to file a complaint against her and wants me to take care of it immediately.

I tell her that my computer hasn't been making any noises lately, but to humor her, I take it apart and double-check the connections and such.

The next day she tells me that the neighbors are still hearing the noise and that she wants me to move my computer to the other side of the room so that the noise won't bother them.

I invite her to listen to my computer so that she can see that it isn't making any noise, but she is so worried that the neighbors are going to file a complaint that she becomes insistent that I move my computer.

The room is small and just barely fits my bed, dresser, and computer desk, but I pull everything out of the room and set it up the way she wants to keep her happy.

The next day she comes into my room and tells me that they can still hear it and that I had better take care of it or I was going to have to find a new place to live.

I wasn't too keen on the idea of hunting down new arrangements, so I offer to go over and try to investigate how my computer could possibly be bothering them.

I get to their house and they invite me upstairs 'where the noise is the loudest'. I get to the top of the stairs and sure enough I can hear a distinct, 'beep', 'beep', 'beep', 'beep'.

I manage to maintain a stoic face, when I reach up to the smoke alarm installed in their upstairs hallway and proceed to untwist it while explaining that smoke alarms need to have their batteries changed at least once a year.

This isn't strictly computer related, as I work on a helpdesk for a telephone banking service.

Me: **** helpdesk, ***** speaking, how can I help?

Customer: This just isn't working! I'm going to cancel my accounts! This is too difficult!

Me: Can I ask what you're trying to do?

Customer: I'm trying to pay a bill.

Me: Okay, all you have to do is press 13...

Customer: Are you stupid? My phone doesn't have a 13 key!

Me: Uh, try pressing the one and then the three?

Also:

Customer: It won't accept my member number!

Me: Okay, what is your number?

Customer: Twenty-six thirty-eight ninety-two

Me: Okay, I see the problem. Try saying two six three eight nine two and the system should understand you.

Customer: That's not my number! My number is twenty-six thirty-eight ninety-two!

Me: Uh, if you try saying the digits individually...

on call...

mem having probs with conection, so went through the usual checks, wanted him to run hyperterminal and asked,

Me )) " if u could go to Start) run...then type in H for Hotel..Yankee...papa...

Member)) if u could slow down.

Me)) im thinking, how can it take so long???"what have u typed so far..

Member)) ive typed hotelyankeepapaechoromeo!!

-------

he had typed all the word i was saying phonetically instaed of H,Y,P,E,R...

Someone came to me with a joystick box containing a manual in its original cellophane. He had the joystick @home, but he thought he should show me the box. I said: Read The !@#$ing Manual!

I'm not a tech or anything, but I am the tech guy in the family. Actually, not just in the family, as even my Computer Science teacher has asked my help a few times... Anyway, a while back, probably a year, a year and a half ago, my sister had a problem with her computer. The modem (!@#$ WinModems) was apparently broken, as it wouldn't dial out, the computer wouldn't recognize it, etc. I would have gone through the full troubleshooting routine, but as the computer was still under warranty by Gateway, and we had a Gateway store 10 minutes away, I figured that it would be easier for me just to suggest taking the computer back to the store to get it fixed. When we got back home, she asked me the following:

'What do you call that part we gave them?'

I replied 'the CPU'

She then responded 'Well, I have a paper to write up, can I use Word without the CPU?'

I had to leave the room before I burst out laughing right in front of her...

I guess I was the BDU (Big Dumb User) this time. My Thinkpad suddenly stopped operating. IBM tech support determined it was a motherboard failure and arranged for the repair. Before sending it in, I always remove the drives and all cards and parts. In two days the unit came back--great service. I put back the drive, battery, cards and tried to start it up. Three beeps, then nothing. Pretty upset, I called IBM tech support. "supposed to be repaired, but it's still not working". Tech went to check on the pattern of three beeps, and at the same time, I looked it up. He came back with the answer, and was I embarrassed. I had put back the other parts, but had forgotten to reinstall the memory. Thinkpad doesn't run too well on zero MB of RAM!

One of those "Haunted Pictures" was going around, where you stare at the screen and suddenly an animation jumps out and screams. My sister-in-law who has already been a victem gets a phone call from her little sister who asks "Does your computer have sound? I want to send you a 'Picture'." No Thanks, how dumb do you think we are?

Got this call from a good ol boy from the Security Forces at my base.

M: Me

C: Customer

M - Blah Customer support, blah blah speaking, how may I help you?

C - Yeah, I got a question

M - Alrighty

C - When I go to lock out my account, what do I press?

(And the confusion arrises.)

M - Do you want to lock out your account?

C - Yeah

M - Do you want to lock your account or do you want to secure your workstation?

C - Uhh... the second one I think

M - Just checking. You have a WIN NT or WIN2K (Base standard. )() OS right?

C - I don't know. How do I tell?

(Now, I could have just told him to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and he could have figured it out right there and then, but I had to string him on.)

M - Well, go to the start menu. When it pops up, there should be the name of your OS on the side of the little menu that pops up.

C - OS?

M - Sorry, Operating System

C - I don't see it.

M - You don't see the Start Menu or you don't see the name of your OS?

C - Both. Where's the Start Menu at?

(I was about three seconds and a crowbar away from manslaughter at this point.)

M - It could be anywhere on your desktop but it will most likely be at the bottom of your desktop to the far left of the screen.

C - Ah, ok, I see it. Took me a while. Sorry about that one. I don't do computers.

(Obiously)

M - That's ok sir. Now do you see the name of your OS?

C - Nope.

(I'm getting pretty upset at this point, but I'm working on it. I wanted to educate this guy best I could so he couldn't terrorize me as much next time around.)

(For that, I had to go 3 year old mode)

M - Ok sir, you see that bar that runs along the bottom of your screen

C - The one with the Start Menu on it?

M - Yeah, right click anywhere on the bar to the right of the start menu. (Thank god he didn't get that dumb and go over to the taskbar and right click)

C - Ok, now what?

M - A pop-up menu should have appeared, go to properties

(I was going to go have him uncheck the "Show Small Icons on the Start Menu" box)

C - Hold on a sec, does the start button do the same thing?

M - What do you mean?

C - When I right clicked on the bar, a menu poped up. Does the start button do the same?

M - When you right click on the start button, it has a different menu with different options, but yes.

(Realized the problem at this moment)

M - Standby a second sir

C - Sure thing

**MUTE PHONE**

(I couldn't stop laughing at this point. I finally quieted down and picked the phone back up)

**UNMUTE**

M - Sir, I was thinking about it. When you went to the start menu, did a Menu pop up?

C - Was there supposed to be one?

M - Sure was.

C - Well, I didn't get one.

M - If you could just left click on the Start button, one should pop up.

C - Oh, you mean that?

M - ......... yes sir. What does it say on the side?

C - Windows Two Thousand.

(I had to keep telling myself that I get paid for this)

M - Control, Alt, Delete

C - What?

M - Control Alt Delete locks your workstation.

C - Ahh, ok. Got it. And I hit it again to unlock it.

M - Yes, hit it again and you can enter your password to unlock it.

C - The same password I used to login the first time?

(AHHHH!!!! This dude sucked!)

M - Yes... sir. Wait, do you mean the first initial password you entered before changing it since this was your first access to the account since it's activation?

C - Say wha?

M - When you logged in, did you enter a password, then it asked you to change it?

C - Oh, yea I did.

M - Ok, use that new password when you want to unlock your computer after you hit control alt delete the second time.

C - Ok, so what I do is hit control alt del once to lock it, then when I want to unlock it, I hit control alt del again and then enter my new password.

M - You got it.

C - Ok, that was easy.

M - (Yeah... even a primate know's that)

C - Thanks alot.

M - Not a problem sir.

C - Bye.

M - Allright, take it easy.

*HANG UP PHONE*

He called back 10 minutes later. He forgot his new password.

I hate cops sometimes.

I was working last year in the tech support call-centre for a big multi-national computer maker in Dublin, dealing with the UK & Irish market. On the phone came a Mr. Patel who was from the start irate and abusive. Wanting to make Mr. Patel a happy man I began my standard troubleshooting, firstly to establish the operating system version. I asked him to right-click on My Computer. Immediately, and at the top of his voice he screamed in my ear "It's not YOUR f@#$ing computer, it's MY f%&*ing computer". I ended the call there. I had enough.

A recovering tech, I went to work for my local hospital about a year ago. I thought my days of frustration were over. But sooner or later, they always find out....

Background - a couple of weeks ago, I was put in charge of the hospital's network. Not necessarily a good thing AFAIAC. Older-than-dirt Pentium 75s with 8 megs of ram, running 3.1, and junk HPs with minimal hardware running XP -*and* I'm expected to do this *while* I'm doing my other work, and my health isn't the best to begin with, and this hasn't helped.

But revenge is sweet, if you take it where you can find it.

The Scene: The hospital.

Date: Oct. 3, 2002.

Time: 10:05 am.

John* (my boss in Housekeeping) comes over to my hall and gets me. He needs me to come downstairs and look at his computer - he's using Word, and it suddenly won't work right for him, and he can't fix it. Off we go, to the basement.

He has a Word 6.0 document that he's currently typing opened on the desktop. "Look what happens when I hit the spacebar," he says, and as soon as he touches the key, I know immediately and exactly what's wrong and how to fix it. But I also know, now, just how much he knows about his machine.

And I am, after all, a BoFH. Not a wannabe, but the genuine article.

"Don't touch it," I warn him. "It's infected with a virus, and I don't want you to catch it. I can fix it, but I'll have to run upstairs for a second to do it." John's looking somewhat more pale by this time, but he agrees to stay there and not let anyone around the machine while I'm gone.

Off I go, upstairs. I went down to the Hospital Emergency Room. There, I gowned, gloved, capped, and masked. I thought about the shoe covers too, just to be complete, but discarded the idea - we don't normally use them anyway, and I didn't want anyone to ask questions at the moment.

Back down the basement stairs, to where John is anxiously waiting. Slowly I walked over to his machine, reached out with my gloved right index finger, and hit his "insert" key.

*tink*

I nodded solemnly at him, turned, and walked back upstairs, without another word.

I didn't make it back to my hall, though. I was laughing so hard by the time I got to the laundry room to de-gown that I had to sit down on the floor. I was still wiping tears from my eyes when John found me there, and the sight of him

kept me laughing for the next three hours.

Now I take care of his home system, too.

* Not his real name - this should be embarrasing enough without that.

I was at work one day when there was a bit of an issue at the support desk, so i walked over and listened in.

A man had brought back a CPU claiming it was faulty and demanding a refund.

"What appears to be the problem sir ?" ask the counter staff.

"I bought this processor yesterday and it doesnt work, I want a refund". replied the customer.

"What does it actually do, or not do in this case?"

"well it just doesnt do anything" said the customer.

The counter staff take takes the chip from the box and turns it over..

"Ah I see, it looks like some of the pins are missing, thats probably why it wouldnt work"

"Yes" said the customer, "i had to cut some off because it wouldnt fit in the socket."

.eof.

During a usual bad day at work, I was approached by a couple in their mid forteys. They claimed that their printer wasnt working, it kept producing very faded results. So I start my dignoses;

"well it looks to me as though the ink is running out." I say.

"Its *not* the ink" replies the customers. "it works fine for a few weeks and then it starts doing this again (shows me a faded text printout)"

"oh right, so what have you done in the past to fix it ?" i enquire.

"well we have to go out and by new ink cartridges".

.eof.

I do support and program maintenance for a 200+ user, corporate intranet application (fairly complicated back end, but simple enough user interface).

I get a Help Desk call from a user who cannot run a report, one of many available. (M = Me, S = She).

M. "You've run this report before?"

S. "Yes, and it's always worked."

M. "So you are familiar with using it?."

S. "Yes."

M. (Here comes the important question, as you know)

"Has anything changed?"

S. "No. It just doesn't work any more."

M. "Hmmm. (Let me find out what she CAN do). Have you run other reports? Do they work now?"

S. "Yes, I have in the past. But, I haven't tried to run anything else right now."

(So now I start asking whether other reports will run, meanwhile testing to see if I can run this myself in case there's a programming issue, which, of course, there isn't. So what's going on here?)

M. "When is the last time this report ran correctly?"

S. "A few days ago. Sometime last week, for sure.

M. "Let's walk through another report."

(Turns out none of them work either. So it's nothing to do with this particular one).

M. "And you haven't made any changes to your Internet Explorer settings or installed any software, or downloaded something?"

S. "No, I haven't. I told you I didn't change anything."

M. (This goes on for more than 10 minutes, with me asking this and that, trying to figure what's changed on her PC, since I know we haven't changed the application, but she says she hasn't done anything.)

M. (Finally) "This is strange. It's like you have a PC that was never set up to run these reports. Yet you say you've been running this one successfully until recently?"

S. "Well, I did get a new computer a few days ago."

(WHAT THE HELL!! 15 minutes on the phone and she couldn't tell me this! Didn't I specifically ASK if anything had changed!!

M. "Oh. I see." (Really, "Oh, sh$t, you a$$hole).

M. "Let's try this new PC setup step. Do this blah, blah blah." (Of course, this solves it straight away).

(So, was it my own fault for not asking if she had a new computer, or was she totally ignorant for not thinking it important enough to tell me this in answer to my first question about anything changing?)

While I don't actually work tech support, I run a small computer business. One time a user brought in a laptop that wasn't powering on, I was rather busy at the time so I asked them to leave it with me and I would get back to them later that day. Anyway, when I got around to fixing it, I tried turning it on, nothing happened, I then plugged in the AC adaptor, pressed the power button, and hey it works. I charged the battery for them, and let them know it was done. They were rather embarassed over the whole thing, and asked me not to tell anyone, yeah right!

So I am working with User who has a hard time telling the right mouse button from the left. We were troubleshooting a network access problem where she was missing some of her network drives. We performed some minor technial troubleshooting steps when I had asked her to open My computer to check if the network drives now appeared.

Me: Alright, we just need to check if that fix worked so I need you to open "My computer" on your desktop.

User: Your computer! What! You didn't pay for this computer its not yours it belongs to ME! I can't believe you I want the name of your supervisor...

Me: The icon that stats "MY COMPUTER" found right on your desktop, please double click on it.

User: Oh...ok..

Thank god for mute buttons.

I never cease to be amazed by people who can't find their desktop icons when they are moved so much as an inch away from where they previously were.

This has happened to me more times than I can count.

I work at a Large College and recently had the opptunity to witness something really stupid! I had brought in my personal computer to work to backup all of my files because the net admin here is a complete @##. (two consecutive monthly backups have been lost). I hook my PC to the network and begin transfereing the 2gb of data.

Half way through this the Net Admin comes in and asks what is up. Tell him that I'm just backing up so i can work at home also. He then procedes to poke around my tower and ask me questions about the specs.

He notices that i have all three of my hard disks in removable drive bays and asks me what they're doing in them. I tell him that I have them in the removable bays so that I can take them out any time i want. He replies,

"Oh thats cool." and i then hear a click.

The idiot actually took my secondary HD out (40GB Maxtor 5400RPM drive) and says, "Hey this one's hot!" I say, "You might have just corrupted my drive." I put it back in and turn on the computer, the drive for some reason is totally destroyed. I inform him that it's useless and he offeres to pay me for it.

Being the lying cheat that i am i inform him that it's a 40GB Ultra Wide SCSI drive which at the time costs about $500.00.

In the end I made $500.00 and got the HD replaced for free because it was under warrenty.

i was chatting with this subnormally intelligent specimen (female) a few mins ago...she refused to believe that one can use msn without a hotmail account. so i logged on to msn with this account and messaged her. i dont have the mind numbing bit before i logged on to my own account to PROVE TO HER that it can be done, but this is the actual saved convo for what happened when i messaged her (minus some unrelated chat about a common friend)

names erased to shield the stupid. enjoy.

ephemera says:

stupid

S Q U I R T says:

HA! HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?

ephemera says:

u refuse to believe me!!!!1

S Q U I R T says:

it wouldnt normally happen

S Q U I R T says:

its just logical

ephemera says:

how can i convince u then?

S Q U I R T says:

what i said

ephemera says:

iT IS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

S Q U I R T says:

what did u do to get this to work?

ephemera says:

HAVE I NOT JUST PROVED IT TO U??????????? HOW THE HELL CAN U BE SO THICK??!

S Q U I R T says:

it shouldnt be possible

ephemera says:

IT BLOODY WELL SHOULD....

S Q U I R T says:

yes u ahve BUT IT IS NOT LOGICALLY POSSIBLE

ephemera says:

BTW IM TOTALLY ANTI MICROSOFT AND DONT USE ANY OF THIER PRODUCTS, SO I WUD NEVER USE HOTMAIL

S Q U I R T says:

it is useleesss argueing with u

S Q U I R T says:

why?

ephemera says:

UR LOGIC IS FLAWED

S Q U I R T says:

what have u got against microsoft?

S Q U I R T says:

no, your thinking is flawed

ephemera says:

obv its useless.....im right, ur wrong and u refuse to accept it even tho im talkin to u rite now!!!!1

ephemera says:

how is it flawed if im talkin to u right now?

S Q U I R T says:

i would be really worried if my brain worked the way yours does

ephemera says:

no, ud be enlightened

S Q U I R T says:

it is useless arguing with u

ephemera says:

please scroll up and read the last reply to that, im not typin it again

S Q U I R T says:

obviously, my standard of thinking is higher than yours

S Q U I R T says:

ok ok

ephemera says:

ahem? just read this convo and ull see just how "true" that is

S Q U I R T says:

shut up

ephemera says:

or do all females rely on self delusions to lessen the emotional impact of thier stupidity?

S Q U I R T says:

what?

S Q U I R T says:

whatever !!!!!

S Q U I R T says:

but there is a sliht possibility that u may be correct this time

ephemera says:

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

S Q U I R T says:

but u ARE generaly wrong

S Q U I R T says:

anyway, what have u been doing?

ephemera says:

?!

ephemera says:

now what will u come up with...............

S Q U I R T says:

what will i come upi with????????

ephemera says:

to prove ur assumed intellectual advantage

S Q U I R T says:

sut up... i'm not trying to proove anyhinh

S Q U I R T says:

awwwww

S Q U I R T says:

lisen, my brother is yelling, cuz he need the comp

S Q U I R T says:

i'll speak to u later, k?

S Q U I R T says:

bye

ephemera says:

ok...bbye

S Q U I R T says:

see u

ephemera says:

bye

~~what could i do but post it here for the whole world to enjoy?!!

I work as a system administrator for a small engineering

company with about 60 computers at 2 sites. After setting up

a new computer and loading and configuring the drafting

software, plotters etc. for one of the techs I returned to

the other office. Next day I received this call:

Tech: We keep getting this message and can't get it to stop!

"the component you are trying to use is on CD, please insert

the Microsoft Office CD" We have tried uninstalling the drafting software and reinstalling it but nothing works!

Me: Just for the hell of it, try inserting the Microsoft

Office CD

Tech: OK, (!@#$! it worked!

I work for a pretty large company doing IT helpdesk work. We support auto dealership's computers, printers and things like that. All of our dealerships have an Intranet that uses a host file for address resolution. One day I get a call from a 3rd party company's network guy. The conversation went a little like this:

me = me

him = the network guy

him: I need to install a router so that this dealership's network can communicate with ours. I need to know the IP addresses you use for the network so I can assign one to my router.

me: Ok...this network is using 10.5.5

him: Wait...But that's only three numbers.

me: (he's just playing, right?!) Well that's the network ID. I can't give you the fourth octet because I would be giving you the address of a specific piece of equipment and it would cause conflicts if you used it.

him: Oh...ok.

me: Since we use all of the lower addresses for hosts, you can use an address such as 10.5.5.254.

him: Really?...One that low? Are you sure you don't want me to use 10.5.5.256 or something?

me: Um...I'm not sure if that's possible (idiot).

Now people that don't deal with networks might see this as kind of complicated but those who know minor networking knows how dumb these questions are coming from someone who makes a living dealing with networks. The bad thing is that this person is probably making a lot more money than me.

Situation: I am trying to get a user to install printer drivers from a CD we supplied...

me: ok...put in the cd and it should autoload. Select "Install printer drivers" from the main menu.

EU: Done. Now it's asking me if I want to install drivers for Windows 95/98 or WindowsNT. Which one should I pick?

me: What version of Windows are you running?

EU: Windows 98

me: Umm...you should probably use the Windows98 drivers.

Was this a stupid question or is it just me?

The company I work for, among other things, makes an emulation program that lets a pc act as a dummy terminal to connect to the server. Here's a call I got...

We'll call the software EmulP.

user: I am running EmulP on a pc and the colors don't look like Roger's. I need to default them.

me: ok..go into Setup\Colors and hit the default button.

user: Nah, that didn't do it..the background is too dark and the foreground is too light.

me: ok...go back to Setup\Colors. See the two buttons labeled foreground and background? Click on one and you can select a color to use.

user: (Getting angry) No..that didn't do it either. Now the background is too light.

me: (Starting to get annoyed) OK..click on one of the buttons. Instead of clicking a color to use, click on advanced. In there is a pallete that has colors starting light and gradually gets darker. Just click anywhere in there and you can customize it to whatever color you have on this pc.

user: (frustrated) Well, now see...this doesn't work either. The colors are too dark and they keep reflecting the sun and it isn't like Roger's pc.

me: (at this time, I felt that it would be best not to say anymore)

Eventually the caller hung up. Can someone please tell me what this guy wanted me to do? Maybe drive across country to click on a color that would suit him?? I guess he just wanted me to look into his mind and remotely set the colors to perfectly match what he has envisioned. riiight.

When I was working in a call center for a major brand computer company, I gave my normal speal, "Thank you for calling s**y my name is Jeff can I have your telephone number starting with the area code please?" Reminding you that the person had about a 45 minute wait just to talk to me says "No, I am not going to give you my telephone number." After pausing for a second I say. "Well, thank you for calling s**y." I put the customer on mute so that he couldn't hear me and eventually hung up :) I still laugh about it to this day.

I work as a programmer, and have created an application suite that currently has about 40-50 different applications. I also work as a sysadmin of sorts, and just about everything else that has to do with our network. I received this from a co-worker the other day (names omitted to protect the foolish):

"Subject: Time"

"I tried to change the time to 3pm thinking that I typed inthe wrong time, but it keeps comming up 15pm. I guess thats military time?? Can we change this?"

That's it.

Needless to say she didn't bother to tell me what in the world she's talking about. I suppose I could ask her, it's probably a bug in some code in one of my apps somewhere, but I think I'll just look for it myself.

I've bought a pair of Network adapters from Netgear (FA331). They were so kind to include a diskette with drivers also for Linux but only for some versions of Red Hat. Since I'm running Debian these drivers didn't work. So I contacted the Web-Support and asked them for help on getting the adaptes to run on my Debian box.

The answer surprised me a little bit. The support team there seems to be on dope or sth.:

"We only deliver drivers for Linux RedHat".

Ok, that's not good but acceptable. But the next sentence made me almost fall from my chair:

"If you want to use these adapters with Debian you should ask Linux".

Humm, so who should I ask then? :-))

I worked for 4 years for a Digial.One day i got a call it went like this

ME Digial technical support how can i help you

Cust I have a problem with my lights

ME Lights on your computer ?

Cust No on my christmas tree

ME Madam this is digital computers you will have to

the shop where you bought them.

Cust NO it says digital christmas lights on the box.

????????????????????????????????

I just started working for an ISP doing tech support. I got my first funny call today.

M - me, C - caller

M: "Thank you for calling ... this is Jordan, can I have your username or e-mail address?"

C: "Yes, this is (so-and-so). I am a network administrator and I deleted the Dial-Up Adapter, and I can't connect. I need you to put it back for me."

Right off the bat, I noticed some problems. First, if you're a network administrator, wouldn't you know that deleting the dial-up adapter would fry your internet connection? And wouldn't you know how to put it back? Anyway...I still don't know if he's our customer, so...

M: "Can I please have your username or e-mail address?"

C: "Ok, yeah, it's blahblah..."

M: "Ok, what version of Windows do you have?"

C: "Windows XE"

M: "O..k, uh, how about ME"

C: "Yeah, that's it."

M: "Ok, click on Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel"

C: "Well, I had a shortcut for that on my desktop! Why didn't you just tell me to use that?"

Like I was supposed to know he had created an icon on his desktop.

M: "Just get to the control panel somehow."

C: "Ok, I'm there."

M: "Now double-click on the Network icon."

Immediately I knew he would have the darn thing set up for single-clicking on icons, and I was about to hear it for presuming he had to double click.

C: "I only have to single click. Why did you say double-click?"

M: "Right. Read to me the list of installed network components."

He proceeds to read off the list, which was missing Client for Microsoft Networks and the Dial-Up Adapter, both of which are needed for our customers to connect. So I tell him that.

M: "Sir, we need to add Client for Microsoft Networks and Dial-Up Adapter for you to connect."

C: "No, I won't add Client. It will screw up my computer, and I know it. I'm a network adminstrator."

M: "Ok. Well, I'd really suggest installing both..."

C: "No! I'm a network administrator, and I know all I need is the dial-up adapter, so tell me how to install it!"

M: [giving in] "Ok, sure, do you have your Windows 98 CD? I can't help you unless you do."

C: "I have a million of those, but I assure you I don't need it! I'll use my CAB files."

M: "That's fine, you can do whatever you want, but you have to have the CD with you before I'm allowed to help you."

C: "Ok, ::loud sigh:: I have it." (an obvious lie)

Took him thru the process of adding the adapter. Then it tried to copy the files it needed...

C: "Oh, now it's asking for the CD...I'll just use my CAB files...let's see here...what? It won't work...What do I do?"

M: "Feed it the CD."

C: "Oh, well, I don't have the CD with me. I'll have to go get it.

M: "REALLY? Imagine that! Here's your case number. Thanks for calling!" *click*

This stuff really does happen, doesn't it! Ha!

A few weeks ago I came across a beautiful older 19" monitor at the surplus computer shop and took it back to the office to use at my workstation. This this had 5 BNC plugs on the back vs the usual HD15 pins, it was so cool. My office handles AV and computer support for the university, so I'd gotten a basic understanding of video and computer signal processing in the course of my job.

I connected the thing up to the PC, looked for about an hour to find the rare Mistubishi (or Hitachi?) drivers on somebody's website, since it wasn't supported anywhere else, and started tweaking. I found a neat CRT alignment freeware program and proceeded to set the convergence, color temp, etc but couldn't get these purple splotches at the bottom corners to go away. Exasperated, I turned to the troubleshooter in Win2k, which asks me:

"Are your speakers too close to the monitor?"

Geez. I'm lucky I didn't ask for help from the engineers!

Ben

I work for a very LARGE bank in the southeast, doing on-site support for a loan center. Anyway, I had to teach this guy how to copy e-mails from Outlook to a shared drive that this particular group keeps updates on. I wrote out very specific instructions for him to follow, went through them a number of times with him (and his boss, and his boss's boss). One of these instructions was to press and hold the shift key while clicking on the last e-mail in the group of e-mails he wanted to copy (to select the group). Anyway, 20 minutes later he comes over to my desk frantic saying, "Your instructions aren't right, I'm pressing shift and it's not doing anything!" To which I replied, "Did you click?" He said "OH" and walked away. I also had to change all "clicks" in the procedures to left-click, or righ-click (depending on what he was doing). I did that and he still didn't know the difference! I told his manager and her boss afterward that I didn't think he'd be able to adapt to the new process even though it wasn't all that different from the one he'd been following before. That's the scary part, he's been doing this particular job for months now!

One of the winners while working for a [moo] PC manufacturer. A woman calls in saying her modem won't connect to the internet...

Me: Well, try and have your computer try to dial in right now.

She: I can't. I'm calling from my neighbors house.

Me: You really need to call back from your house, and be next to your computer.

She: My home phone is disconnected. Why do you think I'm at my neighbors?

She never did grasp the correlation between her phone service and her modem's use of the phone line.

I work as an engineer for an ISP add on that provides a broadband option to ISP's that want to supply their customers a BB solution when no cable or DSL solution is available. I had one such ISP conference me in with a call when they could not get an end user up and running, to help trouble shoot the problem.

I had worked the problem almost to the end but needed their dial up access number for the final stage. I asked the tech what that number was. His reply was directed to the end user, stating to look in chapter 5 of the installation manual, that came with his set-up kit. The end user wanting to confirm the number called it back.

"123-456-7890?"

"Yes sir." came the techs response.

"No, it's not." I answered.

"Yes sir, it is, it's in the manual."

I explained that I had a soft copy of the manual on my system so I could see the page he had referred to and even if I couldn't I knew full well it wasn't right, because I had written the thing and even referred to it as an example.

The tech then put us on hold so he could get his supervisor.

I worked with a girl that thought because she lied often that she was good at it. It was her weekend to be on call. She got a call from a remote office and she apparently didn't feel like working, so she sent a text page from her house to another tech saying her modem wasn't working so she couldn't dial-in to the remote offcie.

How do you send a modem-less text page?

I have Windoze XP on my computer at home. When you install a new program and you have it show in the start menu, when you open the start menu after you install it a little box comes up that says "new programs installed". Now my mom is about the most computer ILliterate person alive. I have a seperate account set up for her use and i have told her how to log off my account. back to my story. so tonight i installed a game and then went to go watch tv. After a few minutes i hear "Son, how do i log off?" "Well you do it the same way u do it on your account" "I can't" "why not" "says a program is blocking it" "What?" i walk over there and say "show me" click's start menu see( its that box ) mom just click it. my mom exclaims "Wow I am so glad you know about computers"

ps did i mention it took her a month to learn how to use the x button without me holding her hand.

I was doing tech support at a small ISP a few years ago. One lady was continually having problems when checking her email - windows would give her a General Protection Fault every time. We'd stepped her through the usual checks, and our suspicion was faulty RAM.

Every time I spoke to her on the phone she was very rude, and kept harping on about these 'important emails from her friends'. So she brought her computer in, and we discovered that her RAM was indeed faulty.

We also discovered that in her inbox were about 30 or 40 emails from all these middle-aged blokes / 'friends' - all buck naked in backyards, on yachts, in forests etc. Important emails my @##!

She came to pick it up and when we gave her the verdict, she refused to believe it, instead arguing that it was a problem resulting from our actions.

So I said to her: "Look, I sent a test message and your computer received it just fine with our RAM in it, so it's definitely your RAM." She replied with "You checked my email, DIDN'T YOU?" I told her that I had to in order to verify the cause of her problem, then tried my hardest not to start laughing.

She made this huffing noise and asked me to help her put the PC back into her car. As I put the machine back in her car, I started laughing uncontrollably. She shot me a dirty look, then she became an ex-customer.

In 1995 I was doing tech support at an ISP, about the time Pamela Anderson's popularity was really beginning to spike. This bloke brought in his computer and told us that his kids had been using it all weekend on the net, and now it wouldn't boot at all.

After a quick look we found that it had so little free hard drive space that Windows couldn't create the swap file, hence it wouldn't boot. The reason for such a lack of space: his kids had downloaded so many nude jpegs of Pammy that they'd filled the hard drive. What impressed us was that they were able to do it with a 28.8k modem!

Some people just aren't quite sure who to call in an emergency...

Me: xyz technical support, this call is-

Her: Hello yes! I've just been in my toilet! And do you know what!?!

Me: Uh, What?

Her: There was something blocking it, like someone had tried to flush something down but it had gotten stuck! And do you know what I did!!

Me: What did you you do?

Her: I fished it out! And do you know what it was!?!

Me: ... what was it?

Her: Two sheets of paper with something written on them. What's the 'playboy cyber club'?

Me: Um, well, that's an entertainment site that offers content in exchange for money.

Her: You mean you can join clubs on the internet??

Me: Yes that's poss-

Her: But there were pictures of women on the pages! And I have three teenage sons and I don't want them just looking at anything!!

Me: Well, you can install-

Her: I just don't understand how the pictures got off the computer!!

Me: You know you can print things?

Her: You can print things now?!?

Me: Yeah anything you can see you can print.

Her: That's amazing! But I'm still unclear on one thing, I don't understand just why, I mean *why* would these pictures be in the toilet???

Me: ...Uh, I really couldn't say. You would have to speak to your family concerning that matter.

Her: Ok right, that's what I'll do. Thank you very much for your help. *click*

Picturing that woman confronting her teenage sons with some dripping wet porn and asking why it was in the toilet kept me going all day.

We have an NT domain where I work. We've been on the domain for about two years, and our users are pretty much comfortable with it. But there is that "one guy" in Facilities with zero computer knowledge, whose hand I always have to hold through the most mundane tasks, including formatting text bold in Word and turning on the monitor.

So the power supply died on the computer he shared with the other Facilities folks, and I replaced it, logging myself in for a while to make sure the spontaneous reboots it had been experiencing didn't crop up again...

I plug it in, and about five minutes later he calls me up:

-"I'm trying to log on to this computer and I'm having a problem."

-"Problems?"

-"Yeah, my username isn't 'savini.'" (my login name)

-"Well, change the username to 'plant.'" (Facilities login name)

Half an hour later, he calls me up again. He's leaving the username as "savini" and using "plant" as the password. He knew the password, in fact I reminded him what it was, but somehow...

We use to be a support desk for a pizza chain. The conditions that these pc were put under did supprise anyone why we always get calls saying that our systems dont work. etc etc. heat plus teenagers that new nothing about pc's is a very bad combination.

so we had one of these typical calls, after spending an hour to try and resolve the system via pcanywhere and phone. We gave up and told the client to bring it the two main compters into us to fix. They knew which two, but however when the pizza girl ( manager) arrived, she brang two monitors instead of the computers.

boy did we have a laugh and you wonder why your pizza arent on time.

not a tech story but funny non the less. i was working on a computer in my school when a one of those stupid 'you have a message" ads come up. my teacher walks over and yells at me for "doing that chatting thing" and i tell her its an ad, so she makes me click it..and low and behold..it goes to some fake site..she then walks away obvisouly embarssed

I've worked as tech/computer support since leaving college nearly 20yrs ago. I have seen alot of idjits but my mum takes the prize.

A couple of years ago Mum decided to learn computing late in life and I decided to get myself a new PC and give her the old one to practice on. She successfully complete the European Computer Driving licence and a "learn to email and use the internet" type of course. I was proud of her efforts. (at least she made some which is more than I can say for some people)

One day she announced she was ready to go online, she had got herself an ISP and felt confident about her Internet searching and general PC use. I was still proud that she had managed to bumble her way through it without actually phoning me.

That was until she phoned and said that she couldn't connect, her ISP didn't understand what the problem was as their setup loaded correctly, could I think of anything that she may of missed?

We had a think and a head scratch.

Me: did you buy a new modem? I took mine out to put in the new PC. I did tell you.

Mum: was that the 90 thingy you were on about when I picked the PC up?

me: yes V.90 internal modem.

Mum: No. Do you think I should get one?

After I finished laughing, I managed to croak a "YES, it helps Ma!!"

Last friday I was happily sat down the pub with my good neighbour in the honour of the birth of his son. Present are the father (obviously) his parents, and his mother-in-law, another neighbour and myself...

Well having heard all about what I do from her son (uh oh) I am informed of all the wonders of this new computer they have bought (sadly I work for that IT corporation! I give up trying to explain that servers and backup devices for corporate companies that I support are not always the same as a home pc) not that they have figured out HOW to work anything yet, which is a small mercy! Having proudly told me that they know how to delete all those ginger biscuits (yes Cookies, she HAD had a few to drink) she is telling me she has found the Add/remove programmes function and knows where system settings are(blood drains my my face simultaniously with that of her son's!)So I think I will test the water and just check before she destroys anything important (like the pics she's been mailed of the grandkids) and innocently ask "Do you ever do any kind of back up at all?" She pipes up, thinking she's caught me out here, and smiles broadly and in a patronising tone informs me that "We don't NEED a back up, we have a HARDdrive!"

Oh great mother of mercies, thank you for giving me the wisdom to have an exdirectory number and her to live 200 miles away!

Deeply Despairing Tech

PS they have an all-singing all-dancing pc btw, with a remote for the DVD player in the pc... Sad that they haven't worked out you need to put a DVD in the drive to watch films on it and are convinced it's broken...

Just had a “tech-tales” worthy experience with my cable isp. The following are two separate chat transcripts with their online helpdesk techs. “firstname” is me, M. and W. are the two techs. These two chats took place maybe 15 mins apart.

1st chat:

M.: Thank you, what technical issue may we help you with?

firstname: I cant access the newsgroups, but I can access internet and email, as well as Kazaa. is there a problem with the news server?

M.: No, right now we are not aware of any problems with the news server in you area.

firstname: i am using a 3rd party newsreader called Xnews. do I need to have my username and password in there? its been so long since I set up the program, I cant remember if i had to use them. I do know that they are not in there now?

M.: I'm sorry I dont know, we don't offer support for Xnews. We can trouble shoot this issue in Outlook Express if you would like.

firstname: well, I guess I am asking if the news server will ask any program attempting to access it for a username/password. also, just to verify, the server is: news-server.xxx.xxx.com, correct?

M.: No, the server won't ask for a password. The server address you are using is correct.

firstname: so, just out of curiosity then, what is to prevent someone who is not a xxx user from accessing your news server?

M.: If your not on the xxx Network you won't be able to access them.

firstname: the server verifies by the IP address then?

M.: Yes

firstname: ok, well I will try to configure OE to access and get back to you if I cant get access that way. thanks

M.: Are there any other technical issues we may assist you with?

firstname: not at the moment, thanks

M.: If you have no further issues that we can assist you with, you may end the chat session by clicking on the Hang Up button. Once again thank you for choosing xxx!

I then made the effort to use Outlook Express, even though I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work, as NOTHING had changed in my Xnews configuration since 12 hours before when I last used it. So…right after getting nowhere with OE, I had the following exchange with another tech.

W: Thank you, what technical issue may we help you with?

firstname: i spoke with M a few mins ago regarding newsgroup access

firstname: I configured OE to access the news server (I usually use Xnews as my reader) and still cant get access, but all other internet access (email, web, Kazaa) works ok

W: Which operating system are you using, Windows or Macintosh? We also require the version please.

firstname: win98se

W: Ok, did you use news-server.xxx.xxx.com as the server?

firstname: yes, I got an error message:

W: Is it on one particular newsgroup?

firstname: any of them. OE said unable to connect to server and the error code was 800ccc0e

W: Thank you, are you running a firewall or home network?

firstname: yes, zonealarm pro

firstname: but it has never given me a problem before

W: Ok, to start totally disable zone alarm temporarily.

firstname: ok one moment

W: Firewalls are the main cause of email and news issues.

W: With zone alarm, you might have to uninstall it.

firstname: ok, its off

W: And how is the connection now?

firstname: let me check, one moment

firstname: no dice, "unable to connect to server"

W: Let's click on start and run and type in winipcfg and click ok.

firstname: ok

W: Then what is listed in the box for your connection?

firstname: there is no box called "connection: but there is one listing my ethernet card

W: What is your current IP address?

firstname: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx same as it has always been

W: Ok, unfortunately there is nothing I can do at the moment. I just checked and the news server is down temporarily.

firstname: ok, any idea when it will be back up?

W: No, not at all. They are never usually down too long though.

firstname: ok, well at least I know its not on my end. thanks

W: You are welcome.

W: Are there any other technical issues we may assist you with?

firstname: nope

W: In an ongoing effort to continue improving our quality of service, we are conducting a customer survey. If you would like to participate, please copy and paste the following link into your browser: http://xxx.xx.com/html/chatsurvey.html.

Mike W: If you have no further issues that we can assist you with, you may end the chat session by clicking on the Hang Up button. Once again thank you for choosing xxx!

Now, why couldn’t the first tech tell me that the server was down? I mean, even if I was the first one to complain, couldn’t he have either pinged the server, or contacted the guys who run the server to see if everything was up and running? Or did he just see that I was using a “non-supported” newsreader and said to himself “aha, there’s the problem”? Also, notice how the second tech tried to blame my firewall, which I’ve had longer than I have had this ISP, for the problem. But at least second tech told me truth about their end. Also, the whole thing took less than 30 minutes (not counting the 45 mins I spent trying to troubleshoot before I ever tried contacting them) so I guess I shouldn’t bitch too much, eh? Especially considering this is only the 2nd major outage they have had in over a year. However, as of this moment, its been over 2 hours since I first noticed the problem with their server. And I am still waiting for newsgroup access.

Think they really want me to do their survey right now? hehehe

I called my bank's 800 number to have my user id and password emailed to me by the customer support phone representative so that I could access my account online. At the time of the call, my email address was:

dhanson_94550@ISP.

The phone rep's response was: "How do you spell underscore?"

As a tech support, I have seen the crazy results of letting some people loose on computers.

Recently I got a call from a user whose monitor was 'broken'. I called up to her and lo-and-behold, there was nothing displaying on her monitor.

I did the usual checks, checked the cables, rebooted the machine, all to no avail.

Then the TS side of my brain kicked in and began searching for something stupid (we have to dumb down to the EU level don't we!!).

I asked the user if she had done anything to her machine or monitor recently, she replied that she hadn't...oh,....except of course for lifting it up and moving it.

While lifting the monitor she had accidently turned the brightness and colour right down, so that the display appeared as an empty screen.

Luckily enough she had left her office, so I was able to sit down and have a good chuckle.

This experience came in handy a few weeks later when another user did exactly the same thing!

A few jobs ago, I worked in the R&D dept. of a large film-processing company. The marketing VP was convinced he was a computer expert. His computer had a CD-ROM drive in it (very rare at the time) and he was annoyed that he had to keep switching CD's in and out (he had about a dozen he used). I suggested he get a CD-ROM "jukebox," and offered to spec one out for him. He declined, sure he could do it himself.

The next day, he came into my office and said "I picked up a jukebox for my CD's, but I'm having trouble installing it. I got a good deal; it was only $40." I knew that was wrong; they were going for hundreds at the time. When I got to his office, he had a CD-ROM "lazy susan" set up next to his computer and was trying to figure out where to plug in the SCSI cable.

I went to a fellow student's house to remove a virus that kept reappearing. Norton would come up at random times and say it found a virus (W32/Opaserv-C) even if nothing was happening. The screensaver didn't work anymore and their DSL bandwidth usage was abnormally high. My first major hurdle was working with the German version of windows and a German keyboard without knowing German.

I made a DOS boot disk there and rebooted. The keyboard was German and the DOS messages were in German but the keymap was U.S. English so I had to remember typing and DOS error messages. I deleted all the files Norton had reported as infected, removed the win.ini entry, and removed the registry entry. Then I rebooted. The computer took three minutes to boot!

The virus appeared to be gone. Then Norton Anti-Virus kept reporting infected files. Looking at the virus information, I tried to figure out what I had missed. It spreads through windows network shares. I looked at the shares it had open.

Drive C was shared read-write with no password on a computer connected to DSL without a firewall! I tried explaining that anybody on the internet could access the hard drive. He didn't seem to think that was a problem.

I've been involved with computers most of my life, but I've only been getting paid for doing computer tech support for a couple of years now. Working for one of the largest cable/dsl ISP's availible for the great unwashed masses I've heard some pretty mind boggling things. This one was from about a month ago and is rather unique as you'll see why.

The call comes in and I get what sounds like a middle aged man on the phone and do my ISP's standard greeting. The member informs me he can't get online that the ISP program is locking up. So I naturally assume he's running a personal firewall or his computer doesn't have enough memory on it. This is how part of the conversation went:

Me: Alright sir, let's go ahead and click on "START" and then "SETTINGS" and then "CONTROL PANEL" if you would please.

User: Start? Could you spell that for me?

Me: Umm, it's S T A R T, the small button that should be in the lower left hand corner of your computer screen.

User: Oh yeah, I see it. Then wot did you say? ( And yes he said it like that. )

Me: Settings sir.

User: Could you spell that for me?

Me: S E T T I N G S

User: Mmmkay, got it.

Me: Now within control panel do you see the "SYSTEM" icon?

User: Could you spell that for me?

Me: S Y S T E M ( Now getting a little irritated at having to spell everything and wondering why he's asking me too. )

User: Mmmkay, got it.

>From there I checked system resources and memory which checked out so I run him through getting the "Close Program" dialog box up to see if he was running any internet security programs or a firewall that might be preventing the ISP program from connecting. Once again I had to spell out Ctrl, Alt, and Delete for the keys I wanted him to press. When the box came up I made the mistake of asking him to tell me what was listed there and he proceeded to spell everything out to me. This is what happened when I mentioned it to him:

Me: Sir, you don't have to spell out all the programs listed there. Just go ahead and read them off to me if you would please.

User: Wot? I have to spell them out.

Me: And why is that sir? ( Trying very hard to keep the frustration from showing. )

User: Cause, I can't read.

Me: You...you can't read sir?

User: Nope, never been able too.

Me: ( Hits mute and bashes head into desk...repeatedly, then hits mute again. ) Please hold sir while I bring someone more suited to trouble shooting this on the line. It will be one moment.

I then left extensive notes in his account detailing the fact he couldn't read...literally, and got him over to our cancellations department. My only question is why would you buy a computer if you can't read in the first place?

I do help desk work for a company that I won't name. One day I got a very annoying call from the type of user that has some intelligence but when you mention "computer", they lose all common sense. In order to make a long story short, I will pick up at the point where I was trying to get him to reboot the PC. (keep in mind that this isn't the complete fix for the problem...this call lasted about 1hr and was supposed to be a 15min. fix).

me: OK we need to reboot the pc. I need you to click on the start button and select "shut down" and tell it to reboot.

him: Ok, I selected reboot. Should I click on the "yes" now?

me: (no...lets just sit here) yea...go head.

(I'm going to skip all of the dumb questions and stuff that happened here while the pc was shutting down...let's just go straight to...

him: ok...it's askin me for a Window's password. What should I put in?

me: Umm...you don't know your passord?

him: no...that's why I told you I didn't want to reboot (he never said this...I ignore it)

me: ok...do you know anybody there that might know the password to this computer?

him: no

me: ok?...I guess we can try the username and password that we ship the pc's with by default. The username is administrator, so click in the username box and type a-d-m-i...

him: (cutting me off) Hold on! your going to fast...what was that again.

me: (slowing down) a--d---m---i---n---i---s---t---r---a---t---o---r. Now repeat that back to me to make sure it's correct.

him: I can't...all I see is stars.

me: (son uva...!!)that's the password box, you have to put it in the username box.

him: well it already says administrator in that box.

(OMG!!! IS THIS MAN REALLY THIS STUPID??)

me: alrighty...now the password that we ship the boxes with is *****

him: It didn't accept that password.

me: well, you will have to wait until someone that knows the password to this box comes in and tells you the password.

him: well we never used a password before.

me: ):( ok...then leave it blank. (why did he tell me he didn't know the password if he knew that they don't use one??)

him: ok..now press ok?

me: (getting really upset) yes...press ok.

...and it accepts him in. I wasted like 1/2 hour trying to get him rebooted and logged in.

My son's best friends mother phoned and said that she was getting this really weird blue screen on her computer, after taking a deep breath I asked her what happened, did she recently install any new software on the computer.?

She told me that she installed this typing tutor program, and I inquired "is that the program, that is 16 bit that I said would not work on XP. She said yes, three other people told her the same thing but she thought we were all wrong, so she installed it anyways.

As courtesy, I decided to troubleshoot her computer but gave up after I admitted that the hard drive was corrupted and she would need a new one and she told me that she spent a lot of money on this computer and now it is broken. How did it break in only a few hours of arrival at her home. She is going to complain to the store that the computer is defective.

I have now avoided this person's calls because within a week of getting her computer, she has called me 10 times with various problems(what is safe mode, what does this blue screen mean, why won't my computer work, I installed a firewall and now my computer won't work, can you tell me why) and to make matter worse, I am doing this all for free....I told you so, why didn't you listen.

I made sure she now has the number for the technical support hotline for the computer company and I made sure all of her calls to me are answered by voice mail

OK, I was chatting to a friend, who works at Microsoft UK and he told me this great story.

H: Him

EU: End User

H: Hello, blah, blah, blah

EU: Um....hi. I'm running Windows Extreme....

H: I'm sorry, what's the program called again?

EU: Windows Extreme....E....X....T...

H: Sir, there is no product available with that name.

EU: Of course there is, I downloaded it yesterday from [name of large media sharing program] yesterday.

H: .......

EU: But when I open it from the desktop it just brings up a porn site in my browser.

H: Sir, I'll just transfer you to our returns department. Please hold.....

Ok, now don’t get me wrong, not all real estate agents are… just the ones who get into the business thinking that their going to be a millionaire and not have to work, like 90% of them. Anyway I worked for a company that supplied electronic keys and palm pilots to the agents so they could open the lock boxes and get the door key. We required that they update these keys via a cradle. Now we provided the cradle, the phone line, and the AC adapter to every agent and tell them the key must update on a nightly bases via phone line. These cradles have lights on the so it’s pretty easy to tell if something’s not plugged in and the electronic key we provided not only has a two light display screen but to make it even easier, it looks like a telephone key pad. It has the 0-9 buttons and an up arrow and down arrow along with a big button that says enter. When they put the key in the cradle the light will turn green. While they're asleep the key updates and transmits data to us letting us know what houses they were in. Here is a typical call:

M = Me

D = Real estate agent

M: Thank you for calling S**** (Anyone who’s bought a house should know this one). My name is Kevin. Can I please get your first and last name.

D: 1512457

M: Sorry but could I please get your first and last name?

D: Well why do you need that I always give my license number when I call.

M: When you call who?

D: The MLS.

M: This is S**** technical support not your MLS. Could I get your name so I can fix your problem?

D: Well this is my problem. My pager thing doesn’t work.

M: Ok, what’s it doing?

D: Nothing.

M: What’s nothing? Is there anything on the screen? Does it say key not updated?

D: Yea that’s it.

M: (ok so I’m use to this and every key says not updated even though they didn’t really answer my question.) Ok, so it says key not updated?

D: Yea, I just told you that.

M: Ok well are you at your cradle or what happened last time you put your key in the cradle?

D: Nothing happened when I put the key in the cradle.

M: (So far typical client call. Now this is where I really start to get frustrated but also can’t stop laughing.) Ok is there a light on the cradle?

D: No

M: Is the power adapter plugged in? (Now under stand this is the same adapter that your cell phone or cordless phone would take)

D: What’s that?

M: The little box that plugs in to the wall that connects to the cradle. It has two prongs on it that you can plug in to a wall out let.

D: Oh is that what that’s for.

M: Yes. (Getting frustrated because there’s a big colorful pull out with how to hook it up with everything. So they pull out the adapter and plug it in to the wall.)

D: There’s still no light.

M: Ok and you plugged it in to the wall?

D: Yes

M: And did you plug the wire coming off it in to the cradle?

D: What’s a cradle?

M: The thing the Key is in.

D: You mean that holder?

M: YES!

D: So now what did you want again?

M: Is the adapter plugged in to it?

D: No it’s plugged in to the wall!

M: And what about the plug coming off it?

D: I didn’t see any plug.

M: The long black wire coming off of it!

D: Oh! So where does this thing go?

M: In to the back of the cradle!

D: Oh!

M: (Finally done) Ok now is the light on?

D: Yes

M: Great (Now I walk him though how to update the key by doing things and we get another error. Not to mention I have to teach the person what a down arrow looks like)

D: I got Error 19

M: (Now here comes the real kicker) Ok is there a phone line plugged in?

D: What do I need a phone line for?

M: Because there’s a modem in the cradle and…

D: Don’t you guys have this on satalite up link so I don’t need that?

M: (This coming from the same person I had to explain an adapter to) No Sir that’s not going to be around for some time!

D: What if I’m at a house and I’m not able to get in?

M: (This is where I tell the person he’s a moron and finish with the problem)(Sometime later…) Ok so you need to hook up the phone line.

D: Ok where’s that?

M: I need you to get the phone line out of the box and then plug it in to the cradle then to the phone outlet in the wall.

D: (He’s plugging it in to the cradle) the other end doesn’t fit in the wall?!

M: Where are you trying to plug it in?

D: The wall outlet!

M: It needs to go in to a phone jack.

D: What’s that?

M: (Now I know there’s stupid people out there but this is a typical call…These people don’t know what anything is that was made after electricity or in that time frame thereafter and this is a normal day. I’m takeing 20 calls a day like this.)(I explain a phone jack)

After all that I finally have this person up and running and you know that next week it will be the same person complaining because he thinks our system is to hard…Thank God I’m not there any more.

Oh one last one: did you know that we should be able to see the screen of a palm pilot when an agent is standing out side the door of a house? Yes because we are all and powerful tech guys and we spy on everyone!

...should not be allowed to breed, breathe, own dogs or be near a computer.

It has been nearly a year since I worked in tech support...Previously I had ben with Microsoft, I am now with the company that bought out the warehouse and tech support for PB/NEC.

Keep in mind that Packard Bell and NEC no longer exist in N America. There has not been a new PB/NEC product made in the US since 1999. However people still seem to think they should have a warranty.

Every day I take calls from people who demand to know why we charge them ($2.99/min) to support these machines. Even when I explain to them that we are NOT PB/NEC they still expect us to provide our services for free.

On top of these geniuses I occassionaly get callers that fit the "myths" that are so common in these stories. Today I took a call from a woman who was trying to repair the windows 98 on her co-workers system, it seemed that while deleting files to clear disk space he decided to delete all of the .sys and .dll files, his excuse was that he did not know what they were for, so they obviously did not need to be there. He also deleted several .com files, claiming that these files had been installed by various websites, after all the websites were .com's and so were these files.

Another call just a few minutes later was from a man that wanted me to help him fix his TV....no not a monito that he called a TV..a REAL TV....in fact an old vacuum tube color console TV.

My very first call today was from a woman that immediately started swearing at me abouther computer, complaining that PB systems were crap and that she would never buy another one, (I should hope not, unless she discovers time travel).

Now normally I would d/c from such a caller, however when they are paying $2.99/min to swear at me, I am willing to let them rant....after about 5 minutes of this I reminded her that she was being charged and that she was welcome to continue her tirade, after all it was her money. Naturally she shut up and told me her issue....her video was set to 16 colors.

I work for a company taking support calls for a tape backup program. Most of the time I deal with the sysadmins of companies who are keeping their data being backed up. So most of the people who call in really know what they are doing.... usually anyway. There have been a few times when someone calls up in a panic saying that the sysadmin just quit or was fired and this whole system has just been dumped in my lap, I have NO idea how any of this works, and I don't even know Unix! Those calls are always fun....

However one of my most memorable calls just made me laugh so hard it was a while before I could take another call. The licenses with the product I support are tied to the IP address of the machine that the program runs on. So, to get the license, you need to give the IP address of the machine. I get a call from a lady who is very puzzled at why the license she was sent is not working. I have her send me the license and I decode it and say ok, is your IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx? She says, no... I say, well, there is a problem here, your license needs to have the IP address coded into it. What is your IP address? She says xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. I asked, is that the one you provided when you bought the license? She says, No, I didn't want to give out my IP address!

Doh! That's why it didn't work. So I had to refer her back to the licensing group again to change her license.

Owell, if she ever reads this I hope she forgives me for putting this up, but it gave me and the rest of the office a good chuckle! :-)

I worked for for a Major Jewish Hospital in Baltimore, MD and I was instructed that you saved files on the Network and not on your local harddrive (it was a limited machine 1G hard drive, 128K Memory, total paranoia associated with the problems there).... Well, I always saved my files to my local drive and then backed up to the network so that everything was backed up. (I also did not use the IT directive that all files be labeled as numbers and you kept a steno pad next to you so you could find the document/information that you wanted). IT told me that this was because no one had a clue as to how to name something intelligently and make subdirectories on the network drive to keep different documents in different areas, ie, just junk, office, patient, doctor, therapist, etc....

Well, one day the network went down... (can't you see what is going to happen), the Director of the Department (also a VP of the Hospital) came and asked if I could do some work for her on some stuff that we had been working on for the past month for the MONTHLY MEETING coming up at 3:00 that afternoon, and then she realized that the network was down, I told her that I could have it onher desk in about 2 hours.... She was surprised. I said it was no problems, since I still had the data on my hard drive all I would have to do is add in today's data and give it to her.

The big result was that Our Department was the only one properly prepared, she got a big raise, (so did I), and then IT was instructed to change their policies, (which didn't work because the other people were not smart enough to create a batch file to save the files to the network at the end of the day, IT had to do it, and IT got pissed at me because they had to do it for EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER AT WORK).

I was best friends with the IT Department before this happened, and was on their 1 most wanted (no typo) I was persona non grata at IT after that, but I always got got excellent service from them because I could "pull strings" and get my computer fixed (after all it saved the day for my Department Director/Vice President)... ;)

I try to be as professional as possible on all my service calls. There are times, however; when due to unforseen situations, all that flies out the window. Being a hardware tech in a port city can lead to some rather unusual circumstances for what would otherwise be routine matters.

One day while aboard an oil tanker, I was replacing a CPU in the captains quarters. I asked the captain about the voltage he had where the computer was plugged in at, he said it was all 120. I had to transfer files and documents from the old computer to the new one. No big deal, cross cable and ethernet, got the files transferred, no problems there, but it was starting to get rather late in the evening (9:00PM). Pulled the old computer out from where it was sitting, plugged the new one in where the old one had been, the captain was right there, and happy that I was almost finished. SPARKS AND FIRE shot out of the back of the power supply!!! I vaguely remember yelling "HOLY $#!t man, I thought you said there was only 120 over here!" as I was scrambling away from the machine. The old machine was plugged into the only 240V socket on the wall, and rather than climbing around under the desk, I had simply used the power cord that was in the old machine to power the new one. Fortunately, I had only blown the power supply, the ship was scheduled to sail at 8:00 AM the next morning.

Thankfully, I already had a good professional relationship with the captain, as I had previously done service on his ship. He was rather understanding of the situation, though I will never forget the look of shock on his face at my outburst, (well it may have been the at the fire coming from the back of his new computer).

Some years ago when I was just being introduced to working IT I worked for a large multinational company. We did the internal IT for mosst european countries but the best one was from with in the headoffice not far from where I sat...

One of the SENIOR managers rang us up and I had the misfortune of getting him...

Half way through the "Goodmorning IT, how can I help you?" I get interupted by this lUser who shouts at me about the phone system not being userfriendly (WTF???) ahh it dawns on me he has called on the outside number which will offer him a choice of languages (hey we cover 15!) and nothing is going to convince him we have an internal number... ok... eventually we get past that (after being told that we should take more initiative and have thought of making the phoneservice more userfriendly) and his problem is that his PA (yes HIS PA!!!) has netscape rather than IE... hmmm ok says I and is it not working, no it works but everyone else has IE and we should check to make sure everyone has upto date stuff! (yeah a team of 25 overworked IT people are likely to try and check 35000 users machines I think NOT!) Finally I agree to go and speak to the people incharge of installing software remotely. First I need the machines ID... Well he doesn't know and it isn't his job to find out... *sigh* well it ain't mine either!

So I call his PA (a sweet little !@#$-scared lady) and I explain her boss has been on the phone and why... She sighs and say ok, she's quite happy with what she has, but she knows him and so she finds me the ID and I get the people with the permissions to do it remotely (after begging them to do it with out the required paperwork, which they agree to once I tell them WHO is involved!!! That's the effect this guy has on people!)

But that was not the end of my runnings with this guy! More later!

Tiko

Same manager, different day. Phone rings, usual things It support bla bla bla. Alarmbells ring as soon as I hear HIS voice... uh oh here we go again... This time he wants more hard drive space (yeah I can see 20Gb are not enough on his lap top!) So I out of spite ask for his computer ID I'd like to remote connect to it to see if it is indeed going to be possible to add more space (hey I was in a bad mood and wanted to know why he had run out of space already!) After some shouting (yeah that's gonna get you a bigger hard drive!!!) I finally get his ID and I connect... oooooo and what do I find? He doesn't have a full hard drive (he's used 3-4Gb...) a desktop filled to bursting point! Links ducoments, Enough for me to rapidly do a screen shot to save for later! OK so I try to explain this to him... no doing he knows computer I don't and I have the wrong attitude. (Wrong attitude??? Cheek!) It ends up with me refusing to request a bigger hard drive and him shouting and swaering to the point where I have my headset on the table and everyone is listening in... Eventually he stops... so I give him a a polite warning that I don't appreciate language like that... ooooo and off he goes again! second warning and I'll hang up if he does it again... $*&^(*& so I hang up :o) He phones back (me has already asked EVERYONE to bounce it till it gets to me!) And I pick it up and he starts on about the crappy tech he spoke to! *big grin* yes sir, that was ME! And as all our calls are recorded we are currently in the process of passing that call to our manager who will take it up with your manager.

My manager DID indeed take it up with this guys manager... the european VICE president... The guy was banned from ever phoning IT again... And I got a basket of goodies from the Vice as thanks for being so proffesional about how I had dealt with him... Hehehehehe

Tiko