Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I´m a Engineering estudent, and I look like one, you know: glasses and smart eyes and so on, two stories for you:

ONE

OK this happen one day I was walking across my University when I see a girl trying to find some place, She really looked lost, so I offered my help:

- hi, you´re looking for something ?

- actually yes, but I can´t find it

- may be I can help you, What office are you looking for?

- not an office, I´m trying to find the web site of this university.

- ???

TWO

I worked in the computers room of my university almost all my carreer one day I had this one:

- Hi, said one user to me.

- Hi, may I help you ?

- Yes, the ink cartridge of the printer is empty

- Sorry, but I don´t undertand you (In the computers room there is only matrix dot printers)

- Yes, the ink cartridge moves but it doesn´t print

THKS

I gotta share this one. We work at a help desk and as usual with help desks customers call a 1-800 number to reach you. The customer calls the help desk number and asks us "What's the number to the help desk?" He replied, "The number you just dialed, I am the help desk".

I am in 10th grade, and the library at our school used to have a old, Windows 3.1 running some tracking program to see how long you've had a book, how much you owe (if you are overdue, that is) and so on. It had come from the Spanish class, and so there were a bunch of old, odd-named file on it. Well, when this thing gets put in there, the librarian takes to it... And that is a bad thing. One day, as I am in the library doing some reaserch, she says:

"Hmm. I think this thing froze."

I go over to her after the invintation, and look at the screen. It is black. I restart it by hitting the power button on it, but nothing happens. I ask her what she had been doing. I get this answer:

"Well, I was deleting some files still on there from {Spanish teacher} and then it froze. They were called dos, or something like that."

I sigh, and tell her:

"You computer is dead, lost, and gone forever. You ripped its heart out, and then threw it on the floor."

She didn't understand, and so I told her about how dos files run the whole thing, and she amazes me still by saying:

"Well then, un-delete them."

I do not, like those people at tech support, have a desk to hit my head on and no one can tell. It was amazing. And as I explain, again, what she did and that it is completely un-doable, she still is persistant:

"I'll call tech support. Oh, I know! I'll use the CD-ROM drive (of which there is none on the obsolete computer) to reload the BIOS and then the CPU can reboot the megahertz!"

I was mega-hurting after that. She had taken all the jargon she knew, to formulate a plan to rescue a ancient computer, and givin me a headache. I only do work on the Internet now.

I work for a fairly large ISP (If you've read my previous tailes, you should know by know.) and have come across quite a few calls that sometimes leave me befuddled about how these people survive every day life.

I recieved a call where a new user was having problems with his service. For some reason our service would not locate the modem. I spent 20 minutes going through everything across the computer to no avail. The Windows found the modem and could easily access it, other internet service providers could (or so he said) but nothing made sense.

Finally it all came together.

Tech: Alright, let's check one more things in the control panel. Go ahead and click on Start, Control Panel, and Phone and modem options.

User: (Repeats the instructions in a German Accent.)

Tech: In there I'd like you to click onto the modems Tab and press Diagnostics.

User: Modems.... And what then?

Tech: Diagnostics.

User: ... Ah... Diagnose'

Tech: (Catching on...) Sir... would your copy of Windows be the german Version.

User: Yes it is, should that matter.

Tech: Yes... in fact if you installed our software in that version, it would tell you that this software must be run on the English version only. And would warn you it would not work correctly otherwise.

User: It did say that, but I thought it wasn't serious.

He'd been translating the text on his screen to english... and what's annoying was that he was warned about it before he even called in. Hmm... like I said before, sometimes I wonder how they live through every day life.

I work PC/LAN support for a company with under 10,000 employees. We have an intercompany email server and we use NetSCRAPE. We get a lot of our help requests through email.

Thoughts are fluid in email, let me give you an example.

I got an email similiar to this, I can't replicate it, no one could.

(L)User: If when you could, XXX needs to be added to the company and their email needs to be XXXAAA's. Possibly could you make all the same programs XXXAAA has on XXX's account too? It is very important XXX is like XXXAAA as XXXAAA is leaving and XXX is getting their computer.

It turns out the user is an ID10T. All they needed is to have an email profile set up on netsCrape. It's like trying to do word problems. Picking out the extra, useless info.

This isn't quite a technical support, but more of a technical installation story.

A few years back I was doing contract work installing the computer end of the AT&T Cable Modems, basically slap in the NIC, set up the IP and run type of jobs.

Well, on one job the Cable guy (I did the computer, he did the wiring) and I showed up together and knocked on the door, which was answered by a main who spoke no English at all. After a bit of miscommunication we managed to let her know what we were there for and get in.

She directed me to an old piece of junk Packard Bell that was half held together with electrical tape. I turned on the machine and found that there was no operating system. I try to tell the maid on this and she finally calls her boss.

We get the boss on the phone and he tells us that not only is that the wrong computer but it's on the other side of the house. So I'm redirected to a #$%@ty laptop running windows 95A and the cable guy has to rerun the cable halfway around the house.

Since I was stuck there waiting for him I got it set up and did a little extra work. I installed the FULL software suite that @Home gave out at thetime (A sure death sentence for a win95 computer) and then used one of the scheduling programs the guy had to (after a three month delay) make it open an MP3 file that I downloaded expecially for him... A version of Denis Leary's "Asshole".

I would have loved to see the look on his face when he heard that.

Since my job is electronics and software engineering, I'm usually pretty competent with anything computer-based. However...

The other day, a friend recorded some music off the BBC's internet radio service and put it on a CD for me. I stuck it in my hi-fi CD player - nothing but static. One track with 70-odd minutes of static. Next time I saw him, I said, "That CD you gave me. Are your sure you recorded the right channel? Cos it's only playing static - there's one track with 70 minutes of static."

He looked at me funny and said, "It's a data CD. All the music is in MP3's. How were you trying to play it?".

DOH!

I work in a reasonably large educational establishment as a senior IT technician. We have a number of students and some of them just ain't the full ticket (some of the tutors aren't too bright either), anyway while chatting to one of the helpdesk staff today we were interrupted by a somewhat hysterical student claiming that a "witch doctor" was randomly appearing on her machine and the student appeared convinced that the PC and herself were cursed.

We eventually calmed the student down and managed to get her to show us what it was she was doing to make this "witch doctor" put in an appearance. She duly opened up Internet Explorer and visited a particular website (have you guessed yet?) and lo & behold was presented with a pop up window which depicted a cartoon character of the said witch doctor.

It took 3 people a full 15 minutes to convince her that she wasn't cursed and that no harm would come to her.

I just got off a call with a (l)user who had trouble getting her mail. She went into this schpeal about how she used to have AOHell, but then converted to my university's ISP. I looked up her account, and everything looked just fine there. I had her open up her Outlook 2K, and we proceeded to her mail settings. What I asked her next made my brain hurt, it was so stupid. As her outgoing mail server, she simply had 'pop3' and her smtp server was 'smtp'... At that point, I think I discovered the problem. I went ahead and changed them to the appropriate servers, and she went on her merry way :)

BTW, keep up with the good tales.

I work on a helpdesk/support type roll for a stockbroking company, this is a typical email we get each day

Hello,

Could I please have access to www.stocknessmonster please? I do not have a screen and find that this is the only way I can track stocks - that is unless helpdesk will give me a screen!! :o)

Cheers

XXX

And these people earn in the hundreds of thousands????

I have been a tech support spec. for the past 3 years. I have quite a few stories yet to tell but the one that I got the most enjoyment out of was on concerning the IS manager.

Note: Our company used KVM switches to switch between networks for two different clients. For the layman...a KVM switch is so that you can use two different computers but only have to use one Keyboard, Video display (monitor) and mouse.

My boss had come to me and asked me to put a CD-ROM drive that he had lended out to one of the managers back into his machine. Noting that there was only one machine that lacked this drive I installed it, booted it up and tested it. It worked fine. So I went about my business. A few hours later I was yelled to very loudly to come into his office. I went in to see what was going on and he started literally yelling at me...stating, "When I tell you to install a drive I expect you to make sure that it works before you leave it!!!" He was clicking on the CD drive in explorer and it appeared that nothing was happening. He finally decided to click on the eject command. When the drive ejected it was on the other machine. Turning red-faced he performed the key commands to switch over to the other machine and 'Voila!' IT'S A MIRACLE' it was working. He said in a hushed tone while NOT looking at me, "Sorry." Then I grinned real big and walked out of the room.

I try not to tell this story too often because I realize that a lot of older people are starting to learn how to use computers and it just doesn't come to them as easily as for younger people. And I give them Kudos for just trying.

I was setting up in the board room to teach a beginning MS Excel class. I had some laptops set out but knowing that for some...the touch pads are difficult to get used to. So I hooked regular mice up to them. I had a lady come in as I was setting up the LCD projector. She sat down at the laptop closest to me. She sat there for a moment just looking at the screen. I finished and started talking to her before the others arrived. She stated a little embarrassed that she didn't really know that much about how to use a computer. (She had only worked on a dumb terminal) So patiently, I asked her if there was anything that she wanted to know. She asked how to start Excel. So I explained, "Just click on the little picture of the Green X. She looked at me then picked up the mouse...literally picked it up...held it out...waving it like a wand in front of the screen to get the arrow to move.

Needless to say, I explained to my supervisors that a pre-requisite of taking a beginning Excel class should be Beginning Computers.

Been reading some of the back posts (great site -- really helps me unwind from the job some days). I do wonder how long some of these techs would last in a theater, tho. You get really good at taking deep breaths in my line of work!

I wish I could share the hair-tearing levels of frustration you get when the curtain is going up in twenty minutes and a clueless, arrogant, and only half-talented person is screaming in your ear.

The worst part is trying to explain to someone why something they want isn't feasible. They always demand an explanation. I have become an expert at dumbing things down, but there are facts that won't simplify no matter how much the user wants them to. Why is it that users figure that as long as they maintain a willfull ignorance, the laws of physics will give them special dispensation? I can't figure out how some of these people use a cellphone. Or even a payphone. And of course, in their heads, it is always the tech's fault. Nothing is ever impossible. Instead, there are just lazy or obstructionist technicians (aparently they didn't notice the "lazy" technician risking his neck to hang a special effect from the rafters, then volunteering to help carry risers.)

I've had people plug electronic keyboards into light dimmers (they kept playing even though "the keys were getting real hot" until the power supply finally fried), plug floor wedges into the subwoofer end of the crossover, realize they "sound kinda boomy" and keep turning them up until the cones split, arrive without a tech rider and start screaming for a sound check even though the band hasn't arrived and no-one is even clear what instruments they play (what EXACTLY do you wish me to sound-check?), and ask for a special lighting effect IN THE BLACKOUT between scenes (oh, yeah, eight seconds is plenty of time to scramble up a ladder and hang an instrument, circuit and focus it, then come down and write a cue)..!

Sometimes I have the impossible task of trying to explain that yes, the house speakers are working perfectly but the Haas Precedence Effect is masking them (a basic and well-documented fundamental of psycho-accoustics). They aren't going to believe that one unless I could somehow sit them down to read one of the various excellent books on sound re-inforcement principles. Ditto a few other fundamental but not-so-intuitive principles.

Far too often, though, a basic grasp of logic and the fine eye for detail of an average three year-old is what is called for (and sadly missing). I had one chorus master change his rehearsal time from sunday night to saturday morning. I caught him running around back stage flipping on every random switch he could find, trying to figure out why the lights were suddenly so dim in the rehearsal hall. (Think about it. It shouldn't take long).

Sorry for ranting there. I just had a "now I've seen everything" with our wireless microphones. The actress came up to the sound man I was training, complaining that her mic wasn't working very well. In fact, said she, it "sounded like she was underwater." Naturally enough, we asked when she had first noticed this problem. It took a little prying, but, yes....back in the dressing room before her entrance she had managed to drop the belt pack...in the toilet.

We gave her horrified looks. "I wiped it off," she said. Oh, thanks. Now, all of you who are thinking "burn it!' are just plain wimps, plus misinformed. A community theater does not buy a new six-hundred dollar mic one day before opening night. And water doesn't hurt electronics. Water plus power hurts electronics. I rinsed out my Kaypro's keyboard in the sink after coffee got in it, and it is still working fifteen years later.

What horrified me is that she had left it switched on, and took it out on stage, and basically tried to cover it up instead of calling the techies. And you can "wipe off the case" all you like but with water sloshing around inside, you are talking fried electronics in a fairly short time.

I rinsed it well. Then I took it apart, wasted a lot of cans of air drying it, and ran Caig D5 into every switch, connector and pot. Fortunately the mic head and condenser element hadn't gone in; just the transmitter belt-pack. After an hour under a lamp to make sure it was thoroughly dry I put in a fresh cell and tested. Good as new.

Same rehearsal an actor's lapel mic got loose and ended up in his pants. His voice sounded very muffled until we figured out the problem. I think our microphones need to start taking saltpetre or something...

I'm a desk monkey for a medium sized ISP. I got a call from a GA customer because Outlook was giving server not found errors. The first thing he asked me after reading the error was 'Did ya hid it?'.

I am superuser of my department, and get to solve all kinds of things because I actually know a thing or two about computers.

Today, a new guy had problems logging on to a computer shared with 7 other users. They each have their own password and profile. Before I could see what was going on, Expert threw himself in the chair and proceeded to prove he had no problems logging on.

Alas, he could not access the network, but did I get a chance to see the error messages ? No.

Expert then called our tech support for help. The computer froze - it's very old and slow - so he shut it down and left. I let the machine reboot and spotted the problem right away - incorrect domain name !! Problem solved in about 10 seconds. Thank you for leaving, Expert

I work as the Sys Admin for a University. Between all the students and faculty/staff, I hear a LOT of interesting tales. This is one that I still get a kick out of.

One of the ladies who works in the president's office was having some problems with her computer. A User Support tech went to look at it and called me for another opinion. Based on the problems, we narrowed it down to a flaky network port in the wall. While we were there, she mentioned that she thought her battery backup system was not working because it would beep every 15 minutes or so. Or course while we were there, it did not beep. So we stuck around for a while waiting for the network person to replace the wall jack. It still did not beep. We left our phone numbers with the lady and said to call one of us if it happens again.

About 30 minutes later, she called saying that the beeping had started again but now was every 5 minutes. I went to her office. Again, it did not beep during the 20 minutes I was there.

A few days later, I got a call from the lady and she was laughing saying that she had figured out the problem. What happened was that her PC was on the floor next to her desk which is where the battery backup was as well. She finally figured out that every time she received an email, she would hear the beep. Her internal PC speaker was turned on and was beeping to let her know an email had come in!

No one was really at fault for this one but it was pretty funny.

I manage a network with about a hundred PC's. Unfortunately, it seems that anything that has a wire or switch in it becomes my department as well, which means phones, video cameras, low-voltage lighting controls, the works. Here's a couple of recent sillies.

We had an exec who comes into my office and says "How do I get the copier to make copies instead of sending faxes?" I walk around the corner from my office, push the big, lighted button that says "COPY" (right next to the big lighted one that says "FAX") and walk away again. I didn't even have to give him crap about it, he did it himself. (chuckle)

We had someone forward our main phone line to a person's desk, so that all the phone calls came in there, instead of to the operator. (Sigh) I had to drive in on a friday night to figure THAT one out and fix it (we're open 24 hours).

We had a lady once who called me up in a panic because her computer was making a continuous beeping noise (I could hear it in the background). I went up to her office, to find she had about a 10" thick stack of manilla folders sitting on her keyboard.

The same lady couldn't figure out why her printer wasn't working, when she had placed her purse on top of it (LaserJet 4000, delivers the paper on top of the unit).

People steal stuff. If someone's keyboard isn't working (say they spill something in it, etc.) instead of confessing and calling me, they just go and switch with someone else's. I get a call one day that someone's keyboard isn't working. I say "I just put a new keyboard down there yesterday...." I go down, and lo and behold, it's not the same keyboard. Someone had switched theirs with the new one, leaving the other employee with a broken keyboard.

All in a day's work, I suppose.

First of all, all my life has been around PCs and this story comes from a couple years ago... from Portugal!

I worked on a big time portuguese PC reseller (I obviously thought that the costumers would have a "little" experience around pcs) as a technician. One day, this man comes though the door, comes up to me and asks me for the "biggest" ram I have. I told him the best one was a 128Mb DIMM PC133 (best one at the time) and he quickly said "That will do, Gimme one". So I did.

A couple days later, he returns, holding a computer. I never guessed what I was about to see... He places the PC in front of me and tells me: "The ram u gave me doesn't work. My pc exploded (What da f...) and I want my money back. Plus, u have to pay for all the damage!!!"

Confronted by that, I took the PC and took a look at what happened.

Inside, a very burned PC... but... i gave him a DIMM... this was a 486... What da... Where's the EDO? no EDO? but... a DIMM instead of an EDO??? How the hell did he get that in there? I went back to him and explained the situation to him...

He replied: "Yeah, of course. u gave me a memory that DIDN'T FIT ON THE PC, so I took a little SAW AND SAWED IT OFF TO SIZE!" At this time I was about to throw the pc on his face, but the worst was yet to come... he ends the conversation with "but I WAS VERY CAREFUL TO NOT TO DAMAGE THE MEMORY!!!" Damn...

Is it me, or does this guy know technics yet to be invented?

Oh Well...

I work at a small ISP and had a woman call up and speak to the other tech.

Him: "Hello, (ISP). How can I help you?"

Her: "Hi! Is this the Internet?"

Him: "Well, we're an Internet Provider..."

Her: "OK! Thanks!"

And then she just hung up!

Another time someone complained of their computer "eating" CD's. CD would go in, but never come out again. So I asked if they could put other CD's in afterwards. Yes, they could. So we had the customer bring the computer in. The CD ROM drive is empty. Opening the case revealed a pile of CD-ROM disc's at the bottom of the case. They had been putting the CD's in the crack UNDERNEATH the CD-ROM drive! (Note that they have used their CD-ROM drive successfully for over a year before this happened.)

Another call consisted of:

Customer: "My computer says to put in the Windows 95 CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive and then click OK! What do I do?"

Tech: "You could try putting the Windows 95 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive and clicking OK..."

Customer: "OK! Thanks!"

I work as a Information Systems Manager for our local government. Like most place, there is always one person who like to dable way out of their realm of knowlegde with the PC, and believed to know everything about them. I had just ordered and installs the HP E machines. These little PC have slots they look like audio devices. After some baiting, I convinced the user that these were futuristic Pc, and al he had to do way talk to it, and it would follow his commands.

Thinking he was a lucky employee, he proceeded to talk to the computer in a deep and loud voice.."COMPUTER, INTERNET PLEASE", the PC just sat there and did nothing. However, crowd was gathering, so he proceeded to repeat his last statement again. And again it did not work. I finally told him that I had yet to install the internet and that he should try a different program. This went on for about 15 minutes when he finally realized that all of his fellow workers were now having a huge laugh at his expense. They nick named him "MR. WIZARD".

He still questions me when I try to dazzle him with my computer knowledge!

My company does onsite tech support for our customers. We had a contract at the beginning of the school year for one of our larger school districts. I was given several work orders for the day. One was for a computer that was not working.

When I arrived, I asked what the problem was. By this time school had been in session for about 4 weeks. I was told by the teacher that the computer had not worked at all this semester, and she was tired of waiting for it to be fixed. When I asked her how many times she had submitted a work order, she told me that her computer was broke so she could not submit one, and had finally asked another teacher to do it for her. She explained how it has been an inconvenience because she needed to enter the student grades and take attendance with another computer in the library.

At that point I reached over and turned on the power strip, pushed the "on" button, and turned on the monitor.

The next day I received another work order from the same teacher, all of her documents and files were not on the computer. She had probably saved all her work on the library computer she had been using, instead of saving to the network drive. The other work order I received was for the same school, they wanted me to format all the library computers and install Windows XP.

You might be able to guess which work order was done first.

Too bad for her.

I'm the database manager (i.e. Development, Documentation and Tech Support) for a large, shared database for a certain railway-related company. This database has a nice little feature that means I can't do development work if other users are logged in (d*mn I hate MS Access). All my users have been told this multiple times.

Nonetheless, I get a call...

(Dumb User) - Hiya, why haven't you finished coding that report for us yet?

(Me) - Because someone is logged into the system so I can't change anything

(At this point I pull up a nice little screen I'd written which showed me who was logged in)

(Dumb User) - Well, just tell them to log off

(Me) - Well, according to my screen, it's you who is logged into the system

(Dumb User) - Yeah, I needed to print some reports off

(Me) - Well can you log out?

(Dumb User) - Why?

(Me) - Because I can't finish coding that report for you until you are!

(Dumb User) - Oh, well I'll log out when I get back from this afternoon's meeting (finishing at 4), can you have the report done by then?

(Me) - ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

Two things that don't go together: Exchange and Mailing lists. On a mailing list here at the University of Minnesota, a teacher sent out an informational mailer addressed to the students on the list. However, one of the students is obviously so important that they need to have an Out-of-Office Auto-Reply set on. So the Auto-Reply replies to the mailer. Which in turn sends that Auto-Reply to the mailing list, which goes to the original sender, which their auto-reply replies to. And so the tale of terror begins. In a period of 15 hours, this has generated over 900 auto-replies. Oh, how the rabbits must envy the reproductive prowess of Exchange when coupled with this mailing list. You'd think Microsoft would have the foresight to take preventative measures for something like this. Well, no you wouldn't. That's my story.

Someone was reading me what there screen said.... They said "C capital colon slash". And I said "Is there a lowercase colon?" Well, am I missing something? Please show me the lowercase colon.

While this isn't a tech support tale, it does point to the fact that many people consider computers to be some kind of magical device.

My wife is a teacher. Her first year of teaching, she kept all her grades in a standard gradebook; at night, she'd bring the book home and I'd crunch the numbers and enter each student's "running average" grade.

Often, she'd get a note from the principal that Johnny's mother (or father) was there and she needed to explain why Johhny was failing. She'd show the parent the grade book, explain that there were ten assignments, and Johhny had done two, so, of course, his current average is an "F." The parents just wouldn't accept that.

The next year, I bought her a laptop computer and a grading program; when she'd get a note from the principal, she'd just run a "grade report" for little Johnny. She'd hand the printout, which had the exact same information as the gradebook, to the parent, who would glance at the red "F" on the page (I gave her a color printer), nod happily and go home to kill little Johnny for wasting the parent's valuable time.

When my wife asked about this, I told her "It's GIGO."

She responded "Isn't that 'Garbage In; Garbage Out?'"

I said "No; nowadays it stands for 'Garbage In; Gospel Out.' If the numbers come from a computer, they MUST be right, because people have no idea what the computer is doing anyway."

This one isn't of me giving tech support but of one time I called Compaq (before the HP merger) for tech support. I was talking to a fellow techie about a problem I was having with my compaq computer (a computer I used to have) and he suggested that I call Compaq's tech support. So I switch on 3-way calling and call them up. I talked to the tech for a little while (with my friend silent) but was unable to resolve the problem. Anyhow at the end of a call that doesn't fix the problem they assign you a case number and tell you to call back later. So while she reads off the number I say back the numbers as if i'm writing them and then hang up just her line (or so I thought). So then I say to my friend something like "I never write down those numbers." at which point the tech (which was still on the line and was just being silent) made some comment about hanging up and I almost died with embarrasement. It turns out I didn't actually turn off the 3way and she heard everything I said to my friend for like a min (which was more than just about the number)! I promptly hung up the phone entirely so I could call my friend back and know that no one was on the line.

Here I am, Friday afternoon, I need a good laugh. A customer calls in speaking like she's the queen of @#$%ing england. I'm like...whoa.....hold on a second.

me: Hi, thank you for calling ______(mid sized isp), this is Billy, how may i help you?

her: Yah, i keep trying to go to this hg tv site and my computer freezes. I've tryed all those codes and it won't work. Can I just.......take a code from another computer and put it on mine? (thinks she's clever-ha!)

me: well...it depends what kind of modems you have.

her: (interupts me) a compaq.

me: no ma'am, the modem is inside your computer.

her: (interupts me again) presario

me: (glance at her record and see she has an hsp micromodem)

me: (while banging my head on my desk) ma'am, i would suggest getting a higher quality modem. it may save you some headaches. you should be able to get a new one for under 50$ at (local computer store).

I've been working tech support for lan/pc/printer/everything else for about a year now...and this has probably been my most interesting call to date. I am now convinced that we have the most brilliant EUs in the world.

me: helpdesk

eu: uh, yes, is this the helpdesk?

me: yes it is, how can i help you?

eu: i have a problem

me: ok...what seems to be the problem?

eu: well, i can't use dialup

me: what error do you get

eu: something about a dialtone

me: no dialtone?

e: something like that

i proceed her through logging into the local account....checking modem properties and dialup settings...everything looks good

me: and you are sure the phone line is hooked up correctly?

eu: yes, it is

me: can you verify that the phone line is plugged into the jack that has a picture of a phone over it?(the pcmcia cards we use have 2 rj-11 jacks and a rj-45 jack, one rj-11 jack is disabled)

eu: no, it's not, it's in the one next to that

me: can you take it out and put it in the jack with a picture of the phone?

eu: no

me: why not?

eu: it won't fit

me: what do you mean it won't fit?

eu: it's too big

me: if it's too big to fit in the phone jack, then you don't have a phone line, you have a LAN line.

eu: no, it's a phone line

me: it's a phone line, but it won't fit in the phone jack?

eu: right

me: ok....

me: i'm sorry ma'am, but what you have isn't a phone line, it's a LAN line. the LAN line is plugged into the LAN jack, which would explain your problem of not getting a dialtone

eu: but can you fix it?

me: can i fix what?

eu: my phone line, it's too big

*slams head on desk*

me: ma'am, you have a LAN line, it's a different cable with a different purpose with a different connector

eu: no, you don't understand, my phone line is too big

me: i'll tell you what, take your laptop home and try to dialup to the network. if you have any problems with it, call me on monday.

eu: so you can't fix my problem?

me: no ma'am, i can't

eu: well what's the point of you being there then?

*holds back every cuss word he knows*

me: i'm sorry, just try it when you get home tonight, and call me if there is a problem there

*EU hangs up in disgust*

Nothing has amazed me more than the stupidity and ignorance of the dreaded EU. Dilbert IS a documentary

short story guys but i felt like sharing it

I asked one of the customer to right click on my computer

the customer replied

"how can i click on your comoputer when i am sitting in us and you are in india"

I had a man call me from one of our branch offices, complaining that he could not over-write an existing file with another file on one of our Unix systems. He had tried several times, did not understand why he couldn't do it, and was finally calling an expert.

Me: "What error message are you getting?"

Him: "It says, 'The file permissions do not allow that action.'"

Me: "What do you think that means?"

Him: "Perhaps I don't have permission to over-write that file?"

Unix is notorious for obscure error messages, but that one is hardly obscure.

I work for a major PC retailer in the UK. I split my time between working on the customer service counter and the tills. Now I'm not saying I know a lot about PC's but I know to get me by. A couple of days ago I was on customer services when this guy puts his machine on the counter with the monitor and a Mirosoft Worksuite, then starts demanding a refund. He'd bought the machine a few days earlier and said that he couldn't log onto Windows XP. So I show him the key code on the back, and he says it doesn't work. I explain our policy of testing all machines before we refund or exchange. I can't understand what the problem is so ask a colleague for help, she said is it Word that's the problem. I go and ask him, turns out that's the problem.

I get the PC hooked up on the dianogistic bench, then start looking at the disks in the Worksuite box. "You don't need to look at those, I've already installed them" says he. Saying nothing I look at the back of the envelopes, lo and behold the keycode is on disk 1. "I didn't look there" Durr! I type in the code and it's the right one. Problem solved! He then starts ranting he wants a refund because he's not happy with it, and he's taken a day off college to get it sorted. I say sorry but as there is nothing wrong with the PC we can't refund. Long story short he wants to see my manager, who tells him we don't sell PC's on a trail basis.

Moral of the story, When we offer support lines for this reason and many others, Use them!!!

The company I do support for (can you hear me now?) got this when we switched to an ASMTP mail system. Never mind why. All customers got a form letter telling them what changed were needed. This is one response, using a form on the website.

contact_name = "J. C."

contact_email = "infrx@.net"

contact_phone = "123-456-7890"

computer_type = "486 "

memory = "less than 32 MB "

operating_system = "Other (describe below) "

modem_speed = "14.4 Kbps "

modem_brand = ""

access_number = ""

problem_type = "E-mail Question "

application_type = "Netscape Communicator "

_additional_info = "Cannot send Email from home computer after making requested changes to Netscape. Using Netscape 3.2 on a windows 3.11 system. Upgrading isn't an option.

Please contact on land line."

On Saturdays I’m open only a few hours (I’m a one-man computer repair shop.)

A college student and her gal friend came in with a non-booting Dell.

A few minutes later it was obviously due to a dead hard drive.

She had no restore disks, so in addition to replacing the hard drive it needed a full install of Windows, drivers and Word.

She only had $100 on her, but she promised to send the balance first thing Monday.

Well… she was cute and so was her friend, and the hundred bucks covered the cost of the hard drive and most of my minimum ‘look at it’ charge so I agreed.

I put in a 30gb drive, installed windows, downloaded the audio and video drivers from the manufacturer’s website, put in a 5 year old copy of Office 97 and even topped off the printer’s ink cartridge.

After three hours the PC boots, goes online, and is able to print. I take her name and address and $100. She still owes $93.

10 days later… still no check. I send her a letter.

10 days later… still no check. I send the letter again, with ‘Second Notice’ in red on it.

10 days later… still no check. I send the letter again, but instead of a business envelope, I use a birthday card envelope, and make it out to 'The xxxxx Family'

A few days later, I get a check for the $93. It’s from her dad.

I can only hope she got a stern talking to from her parents.

Yours

Jsl151@pioneeris.net

I work for a pretty large IT company which deals in hardware... and as a 1st line engineer I get some good'uns from time to time from our call loggers... hey ok I know they aren't techpeople, and they are located abroad as I support 4 languages but the call will come through in english... these are a few of the gems I have at the moment...

1. Curnell error (Kernel error, obvious one!)

2. Server is death... (erhm... I had to resist calling that agent and asking them if the said server was waering a black cape and looked like the grim reaper or if they indeed ment to say it wasn't responding???)

bear in mind now that we produce and support OUR OWN HARDWARE. Note the word HARDWARE! Now if this had come through on a server or pc maybe I could have accepted it, but this came through on a tape backup device:

3. Windows has crashed (and that is my problem WHY??? Turned out he had a stop code on a server that wasn't ours and as he could see the name of the back up device he thought he'd give us a call, after all he gets free support...)

4. Doesn't work (I usually start swearing at them on these, especially if they are dumb enough to a. do a warm handoff or b. put their initials on the call. Now i know they aren't technical but surely even monkeys can guess that Doesn't work is NOT gonna help me!

and then there are the loggers who put customers through to me when they ask to be put through with out asking WHY! one 5 mins ago... Oh but you solved our problem last time, can't yuo have a look at this one? (Last time was a memory issue, this time their printer isn't working, guess what I don't support??? yes you got it! PRINTERS!)

Sigh, coffee time!

Tiko

If you didn't know already, satellite receivers *are* computers. This is a typical call... one I have received at least five times a day.

T: Tech

U: User

T: This is TechPerson, may I have your phone number please?

U: *beeping*

T: Sir, I can't understand phone beeps, may I have your phone number please?

U: But I just gave it to you!

(You get the idea....)

T: What do you see on your screen?

U: Nothing.

T: An error message, a black screen, what?

U: Nothing, I just told you that.

T: Ok, snow or a black screen?

U: It's just black.

Ok... finally know what is going on...

T: Sir, this is a video problem, would you make sure your tv is on the right channel?

U: It is.

T: Would you please make sure.

U: It says "No Input" on the tv... but it's on the right channel.

This usually means it is on a video input and is NOT on the right channel. I get them to the channel...

T: Ok, now what do you see?

U: It's still black.

T: Ok, so you see any information? anything at all?

U: Yea, it has what is on and the channel.

T: Ok, reset your receiver.

U: Receiver? what's that?

T: Your satellite receiver.

U: The antenna on the roof?

T: No, it is the box on top of your tv.

And so on... it's even worse when we have to get them through the menu. We get questions like the following:

U1: Where is the number six?

U2: Menu button? Do you mean the one labeled guide?

U3: I have one black cable and one white...

Coax cables come in every color that exists!

U4: What do you mean I have to fix it! My cable company always came out at no charge!!

T: Well, sir, the cable co. owns all your eqipment. In this case *you* own it, so you have to have it fixed.

U4: Then I'm going to *** (other satellite co.).

T: Sir, I know for a fact that they have the same policy...

U4: Then I'm going back to cable.

(have fun and good riddance!)

Sometimes (not often) the techs are the problem

When logging to the online banking service we kept getting kicked repeatedly. Naturally I called the bank's tech support for assistance.

We wnt over the IE and modem settings. Everything was ok. So the tech advised me to upgrade to IE 6. I didn't want to tie up one of our two phone lines for the time it would take to downlaod the upgrade over a 56.6K modem. But after getting kicked almost every time I logged in, I decided I had no choice.

At first it seemed the upgrade had been worth it. I didn't get kicked off the system for 3 days. Then came time to transfer money to the payroll and, lo and behold, the bank's automated payroll isn't working.

So I call tech support:

Me: I can't get the payroll system to work.

Tech: Let me check (.......) It seems to be working fine. Maybe there's somethign wrong with your settings.

Me: Ok.

Tech: What browser are you using?

Me: IE 6

Tech: Oh. Sorry. There's nothign I can do. Many features of our online system don't work with IE 6.

Me (quite outrages): But you told me to upgrade!!

Tech: We did?

Me: Yes! I kept geting kicked and when I claled I was told to upgrade!

Tech: Oh, I see. Well, yes, the upgrade prevents you from getting kicked.

Me: But half the system doesn't work with IE6

Tech: No, the system doesn't work well with it.

Me: So why the @#%&!! did you tell me to upgrade if you knew you have problems with that version?

Tech: Can you downgrade back to IE5? That might---

I hung up at that point. Downgrade indeed.

I work in a number of schools as tech support. At one school a fan in one of the switches connecting the student lab was starting to make horrible grinding noises. So rather than wait for the fan to die completely I decide to replace it. I find some time when the lab isn't in use, close the door to the lab, drag a whiteboard in front of the door and write on it that the lab is closed for maintenance.

You'd think that would stop people wouldn't you?

I had just enough time to completly unplug the switch, get it out of the rack and take the cover off before a student was sent to tell me that no one could logon to the lab computers. The teacher who had taken a few students in there, past the note on the whiteboard, was one of the ones I thought had a bit more common sense. Espacially as little pieces of papper with a scribbled note have stopped her before.

one firewall/virus protection company has a pop-up ad on the internet that pops up when visiting a wide range of sites, and the pop up is designed to look like an alert box from windows, the box says "attention, your computer may be under attack at this very moment, clikc ok to save your files," well many of my "clients" have experience this pop-up, they call me up, "help, my computer is under attack" then they usually attempt to discribe the problem, but being midgets of the mental variety, they fail, so

I go to service the machine, I run systems checks, there are no viruses, and in most cases, no files worth a hackers time to steal, by this time I know what they experienced, a company attempting to sell its product, so I act like I am doing something, then just install a pop-up blocker, and advise them that it shouldn't be a problem again,and I collect my pay

I work for a small software company doing tech support. One day a customer came into the chat room where I tech and the conversation went something like this:

Her: How come when I go online it doesn't show me all my friends online?

Me: Did this just start happening?

Her: Yes. Well sometimes they show up and sometimes they don't. Most of them don't show up.

Me: Did you go into setup and list your friends?

Her: Do what?

Me: Did you add your friends to your buddy list?

Her: Well, no! I shouldn't have to do that! It should be automatic.

Me: What should be automatic? The names of your friends should automatically show up on your buddy list?

Her: Yes!

Me: Well, we don't know who your friends are. You have to actually type their names in, in setup.

Her: I shouldn't have to do that! I don't have time to do that!

Me: How did you think we would know the names of the friends that you want on your list? We're a really good company, but I'm afraid we don't have ESP...I'll send you some email on setting up your buddy list.

The most gratifying thing I do though is type in my password every day I tech-- It's UR2DUMB. ;-)

Before I was a software tech, I was the person all my friends and family hit up for computer help. I got my dad into computers about 10 years ago. Dad's going on 75 now and sometimes he says really funny things. My favorite story is of the time we were doing some routine maintenance. He lives 3,400 miles from me so we do all this stuff by phone. We had cleaned out his Temp and Temp Internet files and Cookies. We'd emptied his Recycle bin. Then he told me there was one more icon he didn't want on his desktop any more, so I told him to drag it and drop it in the Recycle bin. Next I told him we were going to run Scan Disk and Defrag. He asked, "Shouldn't I empty the Recycle bin first?" Me: "We could but there's only one icon in there." Him: "But it LOOKS really full..." (G)

Heres on I've pulled every so often when I need a laugh

(while resetting someones password)

ME: OK, your new password is Password01 thats with a capital P, a capital zero, and a small one.

It's amazing how you can hear the gears grind over the phone as the person at the other end finally clicks on what I've just said

:)

I work at a communications firm. My job is to install software and troubleshoot it. I recently had a call from someone who's computer did not want to allow the software to install. I finally had to guide her through copying the setup file from the cd to her desktop and then running it from there under safe mode. After the software finally installed, the computer asked her to reboot, which she clicked 'ok' to. She then said (in a distressed tone of voice) "Oh! Oh no! I forgot to put that file back into the little folder!" --I told her that's the nice thing about the "copy" command (geesh).

A few years ago I worked as a tech for a large school district in Pennsylvania. I've been doing LAN admin and help desk since I was about 16 so my realm of experienced incompetence is fairly extensive but this one took the cake.

I get a ticket from my boss to go to the 12th floor - Information Technology Dept. A secretary there called and said it was an emergency, that a whole group of computers were not working (I'm thinking virus, right).

I get there and none of the computers will turn on. I walk over to the lamp on her desk and click it on, nothing. Click it off, nothing. My exact words were:

ME: "So you called tech support for a power outage?"

HER: "Well, our computers don't work."

When I told my boss he laughed histercally for 5 minutes.

A true quote from the Executive Director for Technical Support:

"These damn computers, give me US Mail any day!"

A user came into the I.T. dept. this morning and told one of the AS400 operators that her "monitor was out of ink".

The programmer (keeping a straight face) asked why she thought that.

It seems the display was fading out (the terminal was about to go ka-put)and getting faint and hard to read.

At this contract job I did, we would remote into users computers and do a software migration. A part of the process, we had to user their user name a password. On more than one occasion I encountered a product of the South East education system.

Me: I must have written your password down wrong or you gave me the wrong one.

Him: Ok

Me: So it's "r e k 4 3 ballbat?"

Him: Yeah

Me: **Types in the password**

Him: You've got in too many letters.

Me: Well I'm putting "r e k 4 3 b a l l b...

Him: No. Ballbat. You know. It's the uppercase one.

Me: You mean "exclamation mark?"

Him: Yeah, ballbat.

Me: **rolls eyes** Ok **Types in "rek43!" and it works** Ok thanks.

In my never ending battle with users, I have tried to cut out as much techno babble as possible and use wording that would be familiar with them. Laptop users are usually the worst. First, they are mobile and don't always have a connection to our network. Second, they are usually sales reps. I'm not going into my opinions on them.

Me: Now please understand, it is logging you in on cached information. Information of who you are and your password and such that is stored temporarily on your laptop so you may be able to get in and do some work. However, if you want to change anything on your account, such as you password, you will not be able to change it unless it has a network connection.

User: Ok. So will I be able to change my password?

Me: No, you will not be able to change your password unless you have dialed up to the network and are connected or at work and have the laptop connected to the network.

User: Ok. I need to be connected either at work or through dial-up to change it.

Me: Yes.

User: Ok. Well thank you.

--User calls back--

User: Yeah, I can't change my password.

Me: You're at home right?

User: Yeah.

Me: Have you logged into the dial-up?

User: Uhh, no.

Me: As I mentioned before, you need to be connrcted to the network so it may contact the server so you can change your password.

User: Oh, right

Me: Ok. Now open up Internet Explorer

User: Internet or Windows Explorer

Me: Internet Explorer

User: Internet Explorer?

Me: Yes

User: Um, ok...

A user in the office calls complaining that his keyboard does not work. I go through the normal steps of having him make sure it’s plugged in, reboot the computer, ect. After wasting five minutes I tell him I will be over there in a few minuets. I scrounge up a new keyboard and head over to him.

I check the connection and find nothing. I yank out the broken keyboard, put in the new one, and everything is ok. I walk away holding the broken keyboard. Soon I notice a dripping on my shoes. I brush my finger across the orange liquid and discovered that it had orange soda in it.

Annoyed, I head back to the user/sales rep and firmly ask him “did you spill orange soda in here?”

Him: Uhhhhh, yeah

Me: Why didn’t you tell me you spilled orange soda in your keyboard? It would have saved us a lot of time.

Him: I don’t know

Case ID: 110602-0003

Post Date: 11/6/02

Post Time: 1:41 PM

Caller: ___________

TEL #: ___________

EMAIL: ___________

Call: Posted by email. User was previously using an ancient ver. of StuffIt (old format) and recently "upgraded" to the newer Expander and DropStuff. Can't run them without getting a registration request.

Result: Shareware.

External Call: Cannot use scanner for photocopies without relaunching software first.

Result: Messed around with scanner prefs until it worked again.

This isn't a "dumb computer user" story, but it's pretty silly all the same.

At the Museum of Science in Boston, MA, there is a small robotics exhibit on the third floor. (It's in the same large room where the Van Der Graf generator for lightning shows is, for those who know the layout of the museum.) One of its features is--get this--an Apple IIe computer, running a speech synthesizing program. This was a nifty little program that would sometimes insert little comments before or after "saying" what someone had typed in, such as "Read my lips--just kidding" (another sign of its datedness!)

I was there with my father and my college roommate and marveled at the fact that the old thing was STILL THERE, after all these years. So I decided to tease the computer a little. After typing in a few comments such as "I am older than many people in this room," I decided to go for the big guns. I typed in, "A Palm Pilot has more computing power than me," and pressed Return. The computer said:

"A Palm Pilot has more computing power than me. Hey, who writes your material?"

I think I hurt its feelings ^^;

In sixth grade, everyone was required to take information science. We were placed in front of old Mac computers and taught how to use Excel, Word, Hypercard, etc.

One of our assignments was to use Excel to arrange and sort various items about world countries in a database. One of the questions was, "Which three countries in Europe have the highest GNP?" Our teacher had a map of Europe on the wall for finding out that information.

As I was going up to the teacher, I passed by a classmate's computer. She was also on that question, and I could see that because in the search field (where'd you normally type numerical values, and select bubbles as being Less Than, Equal To, Greater Than, etc.) she had typed "Three European Countries."

Don't laugh yet--the reason I was going up to the teacher was because I wanted to know how to do the same thing. Ohhh...I get it now!

I was sitting around one day, when I got a call from a customer. He said that he wanted to play Warcraft 3 on two computers, but didn't want to network them. One of his friends told him to use a null modem cable, and decided to try it. When it didn't work he called me.

Me: Can I help you?

Cust: I'm trying to use a null modem cable to play Warcraft 3 on two computers. I choose the null modem cable option, but it doesn't work.

Me: Is it a serial or a parallel null modem cable?

Cust: I dunno. How could I tell?

Me: Well, first tell me what brand it is, and where you got it.

Cust: Umm...I dunno what brand it is, but I got it at RadioShack.

Me: OK...How big is the connector, about an inch, or two inches?

Cust: About a quarter of an inch.

Me: A quarter? What? Where is this plugged in?

Cust: I bought a phone wire, and hooked one end to the LINE jack of one modem, and the other to the LINE of the other.

When I think about it, I see how this mistake could be made, but it's still pretty funny.

I worked at a mortgage brokerage firm a few years back where the loan officers (LOs) had to provide their own laptops but we (IT Dept) somehow got stuck supporting them. What a nightmare!!!! Because they could owned the laptop, they could do what they wanted.

One LO decided his laptop was running too slow and somehow came to the conclusion that re-installing Windows 98 would help. This he decided he could do on his own, but half way through he decides that it is taking too long and just shuts down the system. Well it wouldn't boot back up (go figure) so he sends it to us. He had not re-formatted the hard drive, so we re-installed Windows yet again and were able to get it running with all of his data still intact.

We also found out why it was running so slowly; his Systray went 2/3 of the the way across the screen with all of the crap he installed that loads at boot and only had 64MB RAM in the damn thing.

Not immediately computer related. Please bear with me.

Back in the mid 80s a friend called to ask me to help with his VCR. He's left it recording something, but what he got on the tape wasn't the right show.

It turned out his clock was off by 12 hours. So when he set it to record at 2pm, the VCR recorded at 2 am. Ok, that's a mistake anyone might make. But when I pointed this out, he tells me, "I didn't know it had to be set to the right time."

I couldn't help it, so I asked, "Did you know you have to set the VCR tuner to the right channel?" He answers, "Really?"

Should we be surprised when people like him buy PCs or Macs and can't handle them?

This same guy did the following in the 90s:

Bought a 286 with FOUR (4) 5.25" disk drives so he wouldn't have to swap floppies all day long. He didn't get an HD because he thought that was for backups.

Resisted buying a system with a CD drive because he insisted CDs were only for games (and, yes, he had to swap a lot of floppies to install Office 95).

Every time he couldn't access a website he called the ISP to complain about it.

And finally last year he decided to add more RAM to a P3 system (with 128MB already and running as well as could be expected) instead of getting a broadband connection because, he was sure, it's the same thing. WHen he found out it wasn't, he tried to get a refund for his RAM. He got it. Then asked me if a bigger HD would speed up his internet connection.

He's hunting for a DVD player now. I dread answering the phone ;)

I got a call from an overseas supplier:

Him: Is it ok if I email you an attachment?

Me: Sure. Just let me know the filename and size so I'll know it's yours when I get it.

Him: Ok. the file is called XXXX and it's 1.5 GB.

Me: GB? DOn't you mean MB?

Him: Gigabytes. I'm quite sure.

Me: In ONE file?

Him: Is is too big?

Me: Yes, it's too big! Look, my inbox is limited to 10 MB. It won't take a file that large. And it would take you days to upload it.

Him: Oh. Well, I'll burn it to a CD and have it sent by DHL.

Me: Ok, that might work (I didn't say he'd need more than one CD. I was sure his file was 1.5 MB at most)

Two days later I take delivery of two CDs. I begin to second guess myself. A compressed 1.5 GB file could fit in two CDs. What is this guy sending me anyway?

No point in wondering. I pop a CD in and open it with Windows Explorer and I find (drumroll please) a 150K Word file. The other CD had the same file.

I just sent the guy email saying we'd received the CDs and viewed the files (it was a pricelist, if you're interested at this point). I found I could still write on them, so it wasn't a total loss (not for me (G))

Just had to step away from my desk for a moment for this one.

I work at a midwestern University's network help desk for students, faculty, and staff. At this time of night (about 7:00) we don't handle phones, but I'm at a window in our Library where people can ask for help-- mostly issues with not being able to log on to their accounts.

A woman just walked up and threw her ID at me (we require University ID to access accounts for security purposes). "I want my grades for [Communications and Theatre Arts] classes."

"I'm sorry, I can't bring up your grades here."

"Well, some guy brought up something on the computer last time I was here. I want my grades."

"I'm sorry, but whatever someone might have brought up for you in the past wasn't your grades. You can only get your grades from Records and Registration. We don't have access to grades here."

She stormed off in a huff to the other side of the building to ask the guys at the multimedia counter for her grades. They told her the same thing, then laughed when she was gone.

My company was setting up a new office space. We had installed all the new computers when the co-ordinator asked us if everything was ready to go. We told her that it was and she went off to test them. A few minutes later, she came back quite preturbed and informed us in no uncertain terms that none of the computers she'd tested, would turn on. Quite concerned, we went to the first computer she tried and hit the power button. It turned on immediatly. She said, "What did you do?!?!"

I said, "I hit the power button and demonstrated." She got a very embarrassed look on her face and said,

"Oh! I was pressing this button." (the floppy drive eject button)

People really are stupid y'know.

I once rang my ISP because I was having connection problems. I've been with them for about 4 years and when ever I ring up they always tell me the same steps. They use a wizard to fault find.

Knowing what I would be asked to do I had already compleated the steps. This takes about 15mins with all the rebooting.

So I ring support just to ask if there are any known issuses, dialup rack down etc. the guy on the other end starts reading the wizzard screen. So I tell him I've compleated all the steps and I just want to know the service status.

He insists that I MUST compleat all the steps before I contine.

I plead with him to just check the service staus, but no - he knows best.

So 30 mins later when he's been through every wizzard he can find he finally checks the service status.

"I'm sorry sir but the FRIACO dial-ups are not working, you'll have to dial-in using our backup racks"

How did he get that job?????

I work for a small company, selling cordless optical mice. I get a call from a customer (aka idiot) who is having trouble with his mouse.

ME: Hello, this is (my name). Can I help you?

HIM: Yea. My mouse isn't working.

ME: Okay... what kind is it?

HIM: Its the one with the red light

(meaning: optical)

ME: And what is the problem?

HIM: It ain't working.

ME: What isn't working?

HIM: Well, I move it and the arrow on the screen dosn't move

ME: Is your computer on?

HIM: No, I'm in my car now. Should I have it in my car?

ME: No, no. Just, I cant help you when you are in your car. Can you call back?

HIM: Yeah. Sure.

About two hours later, he calls back. I've just finished with a customer in-shop who had some trouble with her mouse, as well. She needed new batteries. (They're cordless, the ones we sell)

ME: Hello, (his name), this is (my name) speaking.

HIM: Okay, my computer is on.

ME: Good. Now-

HIM: HEY! I'm smart enough to turn it on!

ME: I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to imply that... now tell me what happens when you move your mouse

HIM: Okay. [reciver put down] AAAAAHHHHHH!!! IIIIITTT HURTSSSS! I"M BLIIIIIIIIND!!!!!!

ME: SIR! Sir! What the heck happened!

HIM: I moved the arrow...

ME: But why were you hurt!!!?

HIM: The laser-red thing. It hurts when it scans my eye.

ME: Sir... Try putting the mouse on your desk. How does it work after you do that?

HIM: (no screams this time; thats an improvment) Hey! It works! wow!

ME: You are welcome. Good bye.

*click*

The fool had but the optical mouse to his eye, thinking (which he wasn't) that it had to scan his eyeball! Poor guy, almost made himself blind doing that for a few weeks before calling me...

Therefore, this guy shows an example on how we need to master current, (fine, obsolete) technology before we go into such things as optical mice. This guy never had a problem with his old, non-optical mouse. But first day he gets our mouse, he goes ahead and tries to zap his eyes... My god...

this isnt one likely to bug ppl a lot..but u never know. i werk for a reputed computer co support and this is the funniest call i ever got, i felt like strangling myself the minute after.

Me: whats the prob?

Cust: well my network wont connect.

(troubleshooting the card)

Me: the card seems to be okay, what are u connecting to?

Cust: collg network.

Me: okay could u replace the cable ur trying to connect the cable n the computer?

Cust: no room mate with puter.

Me: well plz get nother cable.

Cust: *bangs door of next door neighbour and gets cable* this cable looks different.

Me: different how?

Cust: well its broader.....

Me: does it have EIGHT Wires in the slot.

Cust: yep....mine only has 4

for ppl who havent guessed this already, he was putting the RJ-11 ( telephone cable) into the RJ-45 (Ethernet cable) socket.

This is a story that bears telling because it is so unusual.

We had bought a brand new PC and were looking to install the latest version of MS Office in it. At the time this was Office95, but we knew 97 was coming shortly and it would be best to wait a few monhts.

But, lo and behold, we find an ad in the local paper promising a free upgrade to Office97 if one bought Office95 during a certain time. I called the local offices of MS in my country for more info.

I was told to simply buy Office95, register it by snail-mail or fax and include a copy of the receipt with the registration. Later they would send me the upgrade at no charge (not even shipping). I did as required.

Months later Office97 hits the stores and i call MS again to ask when I might expect mine. The following ensued:

MS: did you buy the specially marked Office95 box and returned the promotion cupon properly filled out?

Me: No. but I called your offices before purchasing Office95 and was told (what I've detailed above)

MS: Sorry. it seems you were missinformed.

Me: Yes, I was. But by Microsoft. I should get the upgrade I was promised.

MS: There's nothing I can do. Sorry.

My boss then sugested writing an email to MS in the USA. I figured it can't hurt, right? So I logged in to the MS website, found a likely email address and sent an email explaining my predicament.

The very next day I got this call from the local MS offices:

MS: It seems we were mistaken. We have your copy of Office97 here. Would you like us to have it messengered to you or would you come in and pick it up yourself?

I was so surprised by this infor that I even said I'd go pick it up. I did and, indeed, I was given a free upgreade just as promised.

I work for a large British ISP, which unfortunately has several different departments for technical support. My friend was sat next to me the other day as we take the calls from customers trying to get connected.

Anyway, my friend gets a call from a customer...

Cust= Hello, can you transfer me through to Emanuel Daeller.

friend thinks "I don't know anyone here called Emanuel..." (and starts searching the directory of workers).

Eventually, he gives in and tells the the customer that he can't find this person.

He finally figures out that another department told the customer to call our number, and ask for "A MANUAL DIALLER"

...doh

I just want to let everyone know that I've taken 31 calls so far today, but none of them were technically related. They were all people who needed to be rescued from their own stupidity. But as Tier II support, sometimes I get the Tier I roll-overs from high call volumes. The following examples will be summarized so I don’t waste your time. And these stories are compatible with people who have short attention spans.

Example #1, Call #1, 9:02 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HER: "Yeah, your guys were out here working on the DSL and now my phones don't work."

ME: "Are you sure it was us? We're the cable company."

HER: “Yes. They were your trucks.”

ME: “We’re the cable company, we don’t do DSL. You need to call your telephone company.”

HER: “But it was your trucks.”

ME: “Okay, even if we broke the phone lines, you need to call the phone company. You can tell them we broke the phone lines and they can bill us for the repairs.”

HER: “But my husband told me to call you.”

ME: “Okay, if the electric company cut the pipes that bring water into your house, who would you want to fix it, the water company, or the electric company?”

HER: “Uh, the electric company.”

ME: “Oh......... I don’t know what else to say. We can’t help you. Call the phone company.”

HER: “Ok.”

Example #2, Call #2, 9:09 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HIM: “Yeah, uh, I want to set up a network with my Internet connection. Do you have a list of approved routers that I can use?”

ME: “Any router will work with our services.”

HIM: “Do I need to install software?”

ME: “No.”

HIM: “Then how does it work without software?”

ME: “It just does. Our services don’t require software.”

HIM: “Then how come I had such a hard time installing it when I got it?”

ME: “Are you using USB?”

HIM: “Yes.”

ME: “You were having problems installing the drivers for the modem, not our services.”

HIM: “Then how come the router doesn’t need software.”

ME: “Because it uses Ethernet.”

HIM: “What’s Ethernet?”

And the call went downhill from there.

Example #3, Call #3, 9:41 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HIM: “Can you tell me what the name of your mail servers are?”

ME: “They’re both mail.%%%.net.”

HIM: “What about pop.%%%.net and smtp.%%%.net?”

ME: “Those work, too.”

HIM: “Then why did you tell me mail.%%%.net?”

ME: “Because it’s easier to just say that they’re both mail.%%%.net instead of the pop server name is pop.%%%.net and the smtp server name is smtp.%%%.net.”

HIM: “Then why did the other guy tell me pop.%%%.net and smtp.%%%.net?”

ME: “They all point to the same IP addresses.”

HIM: “Can I use pop and smtp?”

ME: “Sure.”

(Waiting 30 seconds.)

HIM: “Ok, it worked. Thanks.”

I never asked why he called in if he already knew the answer to the question.

Example #4, Call#4, 10:01 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HER: “Yeah, can you check my account to see if I still have a connection?”

ME: “Sure, what kind of cable modem do you have?”

HER: “Surfboard.”

ME: “Is the ‘online’ light on?”

HER: “Yeah.”

ME: “Then there’s nothing wrong with the connection from us to the modem. What error message does it give you when it doesn’t work?”

HER: “It says to check your connection.”

ME: “Ok, let’s see if you’re getting an IP address. Click on start and run.”

HER: “I can’t.”

ME: “Why not?”

HER: “I don’t have a start button.”

ME: “You’re on a mac?”

HER: “No, it’s not there yet. It’s just a black screen that says to check your connection.”

And the call went downhill from there.

Example #5, Call #6, 10:21 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HIM: “Yeah, I just moved my cable modem to another computer and it doesn’t work.”

ME: “Did you restart the modem?”

HIM: “Yes.”

ME: “How.”

HIM: “I hit the power button.”

ME: “Really... can you tell me what that power button says?”

HIM: “Standby.”

And the call went downhill from there.

Example #6, Call #7, 10:32 AM:

This consisted of me instructing an old man who doesn’t listen to restart his modem. This took 35 minutes.

Example #7, Call #8, 11:18 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HER: Blah blah blah... “I can’t connect.” Blah blah blah...

ME: “Ok, can I get you to power down your modem for me?”

HER: “How do I do that?”

ME: “Just unplug it.”

HER: “Which plug?”

ME: “The one for the power.”

HER: “I don’t know where that one is.”

ME: “It’s the one that goes to the power outlet on the wall.”

HER: “The black one?”

ME: “I don’t know what color it is.”

HER: “Can you just send someone over?”

ME: “No, all we need to do is unplug the modem.”

HER: “I don’t know how to do that.”

ME: “It’s just like unplugging a lamp or a toaster. Just unplug it.”

HER: “Why do you guys have to make these things so hard to fix?”

ME: “You know what a power outlet looks like, right?”

HER: “Of course! Look, I have a college education, but I don’t know anything about computers, so you don’t have to laugh and make fun of me!”

ME: “I’m not laughing at you, I just don’t know how else to say ‘unplug the modem’.”

HER: “Can I talk to your supervisor?”

Somebody’s gotta be messing with me at this point. I must have been given the “idiot skill set” on my phone today. I’ve just GOT to get a real troubleshooting call sometime today. But no...

Example #8, Call #9, 11:45 AM:

ME: "Thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA. How can I help you?"

HIM: Blah blah blah... “I can’t connect.” Blah blah blah...

ME: Blah blah blah... “Take it off your network.” Blah blah blah...

HIM: Blah blah blah... “It’s not my network.” Blah blah blah...

ME: Blah blah blah... “It’s not OUR network.” Blah blah blah...

HIM: “Fine...”

(Moves it to direct-connect.)

HIM: “It works now.”

ME: “Okay.”

HIM: Blah blah blah... “Fix my network.”

ME: Blah blah blah... “No.” Blah blah blah...

HIM: Blah blah blah... “But it worked before...” Blah blah blah... “Fix my network...” Blah blah blah...

ME: Blah blah blah... “No.”

HIM: “I’m canceling my service.”

ME: “Then is there anything else I can do for you then?”

HIM: “No.”

ME: “Ok, thank you for calling the ISP in Irwindale, CA.”

I have NO problem with people who are new to computers and are still learning. Hell, I just love it when people orgasm over hearing the Outlook mail notification “bing” when they get their mail. But there’s a difference between that and people who don’t listen and think they’re right and won’t have it any other way. Sure, computers can be frustrating and can ruin your day, but this anger and rage is just simply uncalled for. If you need help from someone, make sure you’re calling the people who are SUPPOSED to support the thing you need help with. I really think that most people believe that since our cables are touching their computer some way, we’re responsible for the stability, performance, contents, actions, smells, colors and sounds that come out of it.

I know nothing about cars, but if I started having problems with mine, I wouldn’t call Auto Zone and start making threats. I would find the people who can help me, ask for advice, purchase the necessary parts and/or services, listen, and take the necessary precautions to keep the problem from reoccurring.

I humbly thank the people who already do this, but for those of you who don’t... grow up.

I work tech support for a fairly major ISP in the united states, and as a result, have several interesting stories.

#1:

A nice lady calls in with her computer giving her error #680 (no dial tone), and to top it off, when she plugs the line into her comp, none of the phones on that line work either. I'm starting to think her modem is shorting, but I decide to check anyway.

Me: Ok, lets check the connection on the back of your computer. Which port is the phone line plugged into?

Her: um... lemme see.

Me: Does it say phone, or line, or wall, or something like that?

Her: I can't pronounce it...

Me: TELCO?

Her: I'll spell it. E-T-H-E-R-N-E-T.

Me: And the phone cord fits there?

Her: Yep. Well, the jack's a little big.

Me: Lets try finding a jack where the phone cord fits properly.

#2

A friend worked in the escalations department, where customers who ask to talk to a supervisor get transferred. He got this call from a customer who had put our cd into his computer, but when it spun up to read the disc, the CD had shattered.

My Friend(MF): So, um, can you describe what happened when you put the cd into the computer?

Cust: The cd just shattered.

MF: So it just shattered.

Cust: Yeah.

MF: Ok. So, was there particles emanating from the drive?

Cust: um. yeah. when i opened it, there was little silver bits all over the place. It sort of went vrmmmmmm-pschh (imitating sound).

MF: Ah. so sort of like (imitates sound)?

Cust: no, more like this (imitates sound again).

MF: Ok.

This went on for a good 5 minutes, the customer trying to explain what this exploding cd sounded like. this was all while he was on speakerphone, and everyone within 5 seats was roaring.

#3

For those cursed with dialup, you probably know what the modem handshake sounds like, with the hissing and screaming before it is connected. Some, however, do not. And this is apparently a very threatening noise.

I had this one lady call, hysterical about her modem. She was screaming and sobbing and claiming that her modem was posessed.

It took me 20 mins to calm her down

Next, I tried to convince her it was OK to turn on the computer. 10 more mins.

It seems that she could not turn on her computer. Upon hearing the modem handshake, she had grabbed all the cables she could find and pulled. Power, phone, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, everything. We got her computer plugged in again, except for the phone cord. it appears that she had pulled the cord hard enough to leave the end of the cord in the phone jack on the wall. 10 minutes.

Fortunately, nothing else was damaged, so we turned on the computer, and went to control panel. 5 more minutes. slow comp, slow user.

(30 seconds to turn modem volume off.

That call was classic. I informed the user that if anything scary happened, that she should go to the other room until it stopped.

In the UK there was a chain of shops called Tempo selling TV's, washing machines and, yes, computers.

I wandered in to one once and saw they had 256Ram chips on special so I asked the nice young chap at the computer counter if they had one in stock. He looked at the ticket on the counter in front of him (RAM Special Offer: 256Mb £40 Stock code 123-456789) and typed the code into his VDU. He then phoned the stockroom and asked "Have you got any 123-456789 in stock?"

The person at the other end must have said "What is it?" because the salesman peered at the VDU and said "It's, ummm, 'Storage Media'" then looked at me as if to confirm that was what I wanted. Despite the fact that that's not what I'd call 'Storage Media' I said yes.

I don't expect chain store salesman to have great technical skills, though many may have, but I would expect a salesman in a computer department to be able to call something a 'RAM chip' and be understood by a fellow member of staff. The ticket on the counter even had a big photograph of a chip!

Strangly they went bankrupt several weeks later.

This is mre an ISP story with little to do with Tech Support.

We'd signed up with an ISP for unlimited service and were quite happy with it. Then one day I can't access, so I called tech support. Everything seemed ok, so they transfered me to customer service. There I was informed we'd failed to pay our monthly fee for the last three months.

That surprised me, because the fee was charged to our credit card automatically every month. I pointed this out.

CS: Ah, well, you see, we no longer take that credit card. The commision's too high.

Me: Had you let us know, we'd have arranged payment through another card.

CS: Well, we were supposed to send email explaining this.

Me: I never received any email concerning my credit card.

CS: I guess we never sent it.

Me: So why didn't you call us the first month we didn't pay?

CS: Uh...

Me: Never mind. Here's another card number....

Back when the PC world was undergoing the transition from Window 3.xx to Windows 95, a relative of mine decided, very sensibly, to take computer classes before buying a PC of his own.

Naturaly I told him to make sure he took lessons in Win95. he said he would.

He did, too. He really did.

Then went and bought a Mac.

I spent a year doing tech support for a computer company that I won't name, but I will say it's named after a fruit.

A friend of mine took this call:

A customer called and said her printer would not print yellow. It would print every other color of the rainbow, which the technician thought was strange, as yellow is a primary color. The technician ran through all the usual troubleshooting steps and could not get the machine to print yellow. The tech consulted all of his help resources and after nearly three hours of troubleshooting told the customer to take her printer in for repair. She was silent for a few seconds, then said quietly: "Do you think it would help if I took out this yellow construction paper?"

OK, I'm a programmer working for a small software comapny making mainly bespoke database systems.

I used to be a network tech, so i'm enlisted occaisonaly to go fix clients' computers at my current job.

This morning i get my boss telling me i have to drive 40 miles to a dentist client of ours to fix their 'puter.

So off i go.

I arrive there and sit down to be greeted by the 'Invalid System disk, please press enter' message so i think 'Dammit, the hard drive's gone down'.

I get out my screwdriver in readiness just to see a floppy disk in the drive.

So i press eject, power cycle the 'puter and low and behold, it works fine...

I got in my car and drove home.

Not only had my boss not gone through a few simple checks over the phone, the luser hadn't called in the problem for 3 days thinking it would fix itself.

Arrrrggghhhhh!!!

Some time ago a luser asked me what is a program. I gave him the standard "a program is a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do" definition.

A few days later this luser calls me to ask why his program isn't working.

Now, I am not a programmer nor do I claim to be one. My knowledge of programming is, to be charitable, rudimentary. I told the luser this. I also told him to call a friend of mine who is knowledgeable about various programming languages.

Well, not ten minutes later my frind calls me: Did you tell your luser he could program in Word??

Here's what the luser did in a Word document

Computer,

Here are my instructions:

First open the latest installed version of IE4 and then run it. Next call my internet and connect and access it. Next go to my news page and read the new. Finally print out a report of the news you read.

Of course he did save his doument with the filename "Program1"

A relative asked me if I would mind keeping a CD with copies of some Word documents he sometiems needs to have access to during weekends when his office is closed (he doesn't have a a PC at home). These are standard documents with blanks (if any) that can be filled-in by hand that he sends to his customers. His idea was that I could fax them from my home PC. I said fine.

He gave me the disk and the very next weekend asked me to fax something. Sure, no problem. I pop the disk in, open Word, search for the file and.... the disk is blank. I tried Windows Explorer just to make sure. My relative gave me a brand new blank CD-R. A call most naturally follows:

Me: There are no files on the CD you gave me.

Him: What? How?

Me: Either you gave me the wrong disk or you didn't burn the files to begin with.

Him: No! It's the right disk and the files are in there!

Me: I've looked and there are no files. Tell me what you did.

Him: I out the floppy in the drive (here I thought he meant the CD-R) and copied the files from Windows Explorer.

Me: That should have worked (I'm thinking in WinXP the wizard opens and writes the files on the CD. It's simple enough). Did you get any error messages?

Him: Well.... I think so, yes. I think it was something about a full disk. But the files I sent you are only 40MB, more or less, so I decided the error message was wrong. Then I removed the floppy from the drive, opened the CD-R to write on the---

Me: Hold it. What floppy is that?

Him: Just a floppy.

Me: A 3.5" floppy?

Him: Yes, of course. Anyway-

Me: Just a minute. You put a floppy in the drive and copied to it?

Him: Yes.

Me: And you dind't put the CD-R in the CD burner?

Him: No. Why would I do that?

Me: So you can write the f**** files into the f**** CD!!

Him: Oh? It doesn't transfer from the flopy?

Me: No. The CD you gave me is blank. You'll have to go to your office and fax the documents from there.

Him: Well, if you don't want to do me a sinple favor just say so! (hangs up)

He simply didn't believe that by copying to a floppy his files wouldn't magically transfer to a blank CD still in its case. I haven't heard from him since, which is just as well.

Just wondering how the heck Gator, WebGator, Gator Wallet, etc. end up on clients' systems when they claim they never installed or downloaded 'em!?!?!? :-) I guess those emarketers are getting tricky, lol.

I provide technical support for a Cable Internet provider, and recieved the one call I thought I'd never get.

Me: Me

Cust: Customer

After getting the important ISP related information, I asked the customer how I can help her.

Cust: After my Internet service was installed, I can't get my computer on. It keeps asking me to remove the disk and press any key. I keep on pressing a key, and the message comes back.

[Of course, this was not in my work's support boundries, but being the nice technician I was, and since it'd take 2 minutes to fix the problem, I decided to help her.]

Me: Is there a floppy disk in the drive?

Cust: Yes, but I just took it out.

Me: Did you press any key?

Cust: Yes, but the screen came back up.

Me: Try restarting the computer.

[After pressing the power button twice to shut down and turn back on]

Cust: It's still asking me to remove the disk.

Me: Ok, you're going to need to talk to you computer manufacturer.

Cust: Oh, what about this disk that says ******* [The name of the Install Disk].

[At this point, my brain is going into a maddened state wondering why she did not tell me this when I asked her if there was a disk in the floppy drive....]

Me: Is that in your disk drive?

Cust: Yes.

Me: Remove the Disk, and press any key.

Cust: Oh, it worked. Thank you.

A man who goes through both MCSE and A+ training, and holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, calls up his son to try and figure out just how to plug a phone cord into a 4-port switch....

I work at a computer lab at my university, where I will help out anyone that needs help with computers. Needless to say, there are a lot of people who don't know what they are doing, like this one time with this Asian woman. She came asking me for help because she couldn't open a Word document from her disk. So I go with her to her computer and try to open the file. The drive makes a lot of noise--bad sign. She then proceeds to take the disk out WHILE IT'S STILL BEING READ, and then slided the metal cover back and touches the film trying to explain to me that it can't open the file. I spent the next several minutes trying to explain that you can't do that to floppy disks and that her work was lost because she damadged the disk.

Another user-error from the Demon Database Developer

In one of my previous jobs I used to code validation/processing software for student records. These were MONSTER programs with many many hundreds of variables flying around. We would use 'hidden screens' (ones the users could not see but that ran in the background) for any kind of heavy processing.

This is a call when I got hauled into Tech Support to answer questions on the product (I was the only coder on that project) My thoughts are in brackets.

(l)user: A really dumb idiot from one of the higher education colleges in the uk

Me: Well, me really

(l)user: Alright honey (yes, I'm female....), all our records have gone, what has your bl**dy software done to it??

Me: (Looking through remote dial-up screen, yes, all the records are gone), well sir, can you tell me what screen you were on last?

(l)user: ***H678 (first 3 digits removed to keep company annoymous)

Me: (Really confused now - that's a hidden screen) Sir, how did you access that? It's a hidden screen.

(l)user: Yeah, I know, I accessed it directly to speed up processing (we never did find out HOW he'd done this...)

Me: Do you have backups of your data?

(l)user: Yes, we take them every night.

Me: Well, I suggest you restore your database from backup, because you ran that hidden screen you have completely wiped all of your data from yo0ur system. (This hidden screen, if you didn't pass it any parameters would cheerfully wipe your entire system)

(l)user: WHAT?!! Listen honey, your company wrote the software, you bl**dy well fix it!!

Me: I'm sorry sir, users are not supposed to run hidden processing screens precisely because this kind of thing can happen. There is no way you should have been able to access that screen.

(l)user: Look, I was just messing about ok? Fix my data!!!

Me: (reiterates point about restoring from backups - we don't keep backups of user data)

(l)user: Look, f**k you honey, you obviously don't know anything about this system, get me one of the programmers, I'm sure he'll know what to do.

Me: Sir, I AM the programmer for this product, in fact I'm the ONLY programmer for it, would you care to insult me again? (Programmers being allowed a certain amount of bad language as we're not trained in customer support and we know all the source code and are such irreplaceable).

(l)user: (CLICK)

Result: 2 days later, apologetic phone call from the I.S manager at that college. Turns out the abusive idiot had in fact been a temp who fancied himself as a bit of a 'Hacker', had wiped the entire database. They made him restore it (unpaid of course) and kicked him out. The programming team got a box of chocolates for not calling him a c**t from management.

I work in a large New York law firm, and a co-worker was meeting me for lunch. We're both techs, so he tagged along while I closed up a call about installing a new version of Netscape. The user used Netscape to access her MSN account, which she uses to keep in touch with clients.

She asked us to show her how to update the Netscape client, as her roommate needed it as well. I said "double-click on My Computer..." and she said "well, where's your computer?".

My friend ran out of the room and hit the floor laughing for 5 minutes uncontrollably.

I got a call the other day from a user saying that her computer was acting up and needed to be fixed. Well, I can't just accept that and have been told that if there is a problem with a user's computer, the field tech for that area must look at it first. According to the user, the field tech had taken a look at it and advised her that it wasn't a software problem and it would need to sent out for repair.

Okay, I needed some details to give to the repair people so

I ask what the problem was.

Her : It's ringing all the time when I turn it on.

Me : (Ringing?) Do you mean ringing or beeping?

Her : Ringing.

Me : Let me see if I understand this, you say that it beeps constantly when you turn it on?

Her : Yes. It rings.

Me : (Knowing what the problem is) Can I ask you to check your keyboard and make sure there isn't a key stuck or pressed on it?

Her : (Sound of her banging the keys) They seem alright now.

Me : Turn your system back on. (I wait while the system boots)

Her : Oh! It looks like it's going to work this time! Thank you!

Me : No problem. Have a nice day.

Just goes to show that even though you're a field tech in charge of a large area, you shouldn't overlook the obvious.

One time a user calls me complaining his mouse isn't working right. The pointer was jerky. I assumed at once it was a case of dirty rollers. I was about to say so when the user says, "I think the battery's running low."

Me: There's no battery in your mouse.

Him: Yes there is. It's electrical, no? I don't have it plugged in, do I?

Me: The mouse draws electricity from the PC, unless it's a wireless mouse and yours isn't. Look, you probably have dirty rollers. Just pick up the m--

Him: Rollers? But I have an optical mouse.

Me: No, you have a regular mouse (opticals had just hit the market and we hadn't purchased any yet).

Him: Then what's the wheel between the two buttons?

Me: That's for scrolling. Now. Pick up the mouse and--

Him: Are you sure it's not optical? My friend told me---

(ARGH!! Why do lusers have friends anyway?)

Me: Did he tell you about the battery as well?

Him: Yes. He said that--

Me: Good! Call _him_ and ask _him_ to solve your problem. Bye!!!

I know that was rude, but it was soooooo satisfying! Why, I dind't even slam the phone.

Later, of course, I went down to his office and cleaned out the rollers, which were long overdue for a cleaning. The mouse worked perfectly after that (she said smugly).

We all make mistakes. And, sometimes, we can be that stupid.

Years ago a virus called NATAS went on a rampage. Somehow my home PC got infected and I had a devil of a time Removing the little sucker.

What finally worked was a boot up floppy with a dedicated NATAS-remover issued by a company that makes virus scanning software. A freind secured such a floppy for me.

Next one of our work PCs got it too. So filled with confidence I pop the floppy in and run the special program. Of course I did not boot with it (I figured, what for?) and of course I had neglected to write-protect the floppy. Long story short, the floppy got infected but I didn't realize that.

We had just purchased a brand new notebook PC and I decided to install the special program in it just in case. The notebook was off, so I booted with the floppy.

You guessed it: I infected the notebook.

It took another visit to my friend to get another (clean) boot-up floppy and over three days to erradicate the little bugger from our PCs. And I had to sit for hours with the notebook restoring its HD from 30 or so floppies.

Good news is I've become so paranoid about viruses (viri?) since then I haven't had another infected PC in over 8 years.

I work at a school with a large computer network. Recently one of the other technicians came to me saying that a teacher, who has taught in a room with about 20 computers for a few years, asked what the red light on the front of the computer was for, and if it should flicker like that.

He explained what a hard drive light was.

Like most IT type people, I did my time in the trenches and worked help-desk. In this case it was for a large two name computer manufacturer that we'll call Pewlett Hackard. Since my background was in hardware/software I had the joy of working on thier personal computer line which has cured me of ever wanting to own, or recommend one to friends / colleagues.

Usually it wasn't a big problem, but occasionally you'd wind up with somebody that just coudln't grasp the concept you're trying to explain to them. Case and point, the user here didn't speak English very well and if he didn't understand would just agree with what I said.

Well, his problem was (after probing for 10 minutes without any real results) that as soon as he got to the desktop, the system would either freeze or crash. Well, of course he didn't do anything to it, nobody ever does anything to their systems.

I figured that it was something he had loaded that was conflicting with Windoze ME upon startup so I had to try an get him into Safe Mode and clear it out that way. Not a problem right? Just boot up, hit f8 repeatedly until you get the menu and choose "safe mode" from the menu. Well, that wasn't so easy. In fact it took over 15 minutes to get him to hit the f8 key at the right point. I swear, it went like this:

Me : Okay, when you get to the boot up screen. As soon as you see the letters appear, hit the f8 key several times.

Him : Which one is that?

Me : You see at the top of your keyboard F1, F2, F3...

Him : ya ya ya, up to F12.

Me : Right up there.

(*reboot*)

And in the background I hear the Windoze startup sound.

Me : You didn't hit the f8 key.

Him : Which one is that?

And this continued a few times until finally I told him (on the fourth time).

Me : Okay. You see the F1 key?

Him : ya.

Me : I want you to move your finger to the next key to the right. Which one do you see?

Him : F2.

Me : Good. Now move it again to the right, which one do you see?

Him : F3.

Me : Now keep moving along that line until you see F8.

Him : It not there.

Me : (ready to hang up on this guy) You mean to tell me that your keyboard is missing the F8 key?

Him : ya.

Me : Alright. I want you to find and put your finger over the F7 key on the keyboard. Do you see it?

Him : ya.

Me : What key do you have your finger on?

Him : F7.

Me : Good. Now move over 2 keys to the right and put another finger on that key. Which one is it?

Him : F9.

Me : Good. Now I want you to look between the F7 key and the F9 key and tell me which key you see.

Him : F8.

Me : Right! And that's the missing key I want you to hit to hit once you hear the startup beep and see the white words on the screen.

Finally got him to the menu and into safe mode.

A 2 minute operation that took over half an hour to disable about 50 things this guy has scheduled to start with Windoze.

And people wonder why I say we should have permits to own computers?

I'm not a tech support professional, but I play one on TV, and by TV I mean friends and family. Knowing the person... well, personally helps me keep a cool head when things get frustrating, but when that fails I just think about this:

I hate cooking. I fear cooking. Anything that requires an oven is simply not on my diet or is prepared by someone else. My cutting board is as clean as the day I recieved it as a gift.

I once got a wok to do stir-fry because I was told anybody could do it.

I set the cooking oil on fire.

I threw water on it.

I burned the counter.

And my eyebrows.

The wok was history.

My point is: we all have our stupid things that make us wish we had someone understanding and patient (and knowledgeable) helping us. A professional. Someone who will lie to us and say that they see our problem all the time, and then tells us what to do (or, at least we think they do).

So, when my uncle is cursing at his computer, his children, me and the Universe in general, I just remind myself that I have been him.

And that usually helps.

I work in the computer industry, so I'm tech support for my whole family. The other day, my nephew called me on my cell phone about a problem with his laptop. It seems h'ed accidently plugged his printer supply (30 VDC) into his laptop (which took 20 VDC). It worked fine for about 1/2 an hour, then stopped working. His question: "Could that have damaged something?" The sad part is that he's a medical student, doing his hospital rotations. He should graduate in about a year. His undergraduate work was in engineering.

In a previous job, I worked technical support for a company that sold automation solutions to industries. A customer from about 100 miles north called me and needed to know how to format a floppy disk. He only had one, so I walked him through it:

1) Insert the floppy disk 'til it clicks (3.5" floppy).

2) Type A:(enter)

3) Type format

4) Hit "y"

He did that, and it took a very long time. When it was done, his (DOS-based system kept giving "command interpreter not found." (Uh-oh.)

I asked him to do a screen print and fax it to me. Here's what it said:

c:\)a;

Bad command or filename

c:\)format

All data will be erased on non-removable drive C: Are you sure? (Y/N)

Y

Formatting C:

Done

(drive specs)

Command Interpreter not found.

C:\)

When I told him what he'd done, his only remark was: "Oh; yeah. I get the colon and semicolon confused all the time."

In the famous words of Charlie Brown: "Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!"

While I was working at tech support for Quarterdeck Office Systems (defunct company who used to make DESQView and QEMM-386) one of our techs got an interesting call.

DESQView was popular at a time when mice weren't exactly commonplace and mouse drivers were a tad flakey and sometimes DESQView would "lose" the mouse; i.e. the mouse cursor would no longer move. So one of the menu options in DESQView was "Revive Mouse." A user called up and wanted to know why he couldn't use his mouse to click on Revive Mouse.

Back in the days of DOS I supported Norton Utilities. Two programs, in particular, are involved in this tale, Speed Disk and Disk Edit.

User: I hear that if you move your data to the front of your drive that things work faster.

Me: Yes, that's true. That's why we make Speed Disk.

User: Well, I used Disk Edit to move all the data to the front of the drive.

The user had copied the entire data area of the drive (basically everything from the root directory on to the last sector of the drive) to the very front of the drive, overwriting the Master Boot Record, DOS Boot Record, both FATs and the root directory. He wanted to us to help him fix his mistake.

I got a number of calls during the day from one of our dealers who was having troubles setting up one of our units.

Each call we got a little further along, but every time he called he sounded like he had him mouth full... so I asked him about the "bad line"..

He was in the middle of a chocolate factory and munching on the product, all sorts of tasty things.

After a couple of calls a asked him where my choclates were and made a joke out of it..

Next day a box arrived for me, Priority paid, deliviered over night by express courier...

A five kilogram (thats 11 pound) box of chocolates...

You know it nice when someone does something like that..

This is the reverse of most of the tech stories. This time it was the customer that beat the alesman, anywho here's my story:

m-me

sr-sales rep

I was looking around the computer store for an IP Router as I've been living on 30-day gateway trials for a while to get on the net.

I didn't see anything so I proceeded to the counter to ask one of the french sales reps.

m- do you have any IP Routers?

sr-(looks at me like i'm from Mars)

m-Do you have an I-P- Router

sr- (makes a few noises and looks around embarrasd)

m- Well do you or do you not?

sr- Well, if it not there(pointing to aisles) i guess we don't have one.

m- ok, thanks.

I waled out thinking of how much smarter that guy made me feel than I already am.

Unfortunately I can't claim responsibility for this, a collegue of mine told me his story. While moving a PC from one desk to another my collegue asked the user if she would hold the network cable for him, she did so and started to wave it around in her hand as she was talking.

My collegue interrupted her and joked 'Oh don't wave it around, all the packets will escape'. The look of horror on the users face was priceless as she quickly put it back on the desk.

Later she appologised to him at which point he laughed and informed her that we was infact joking!!!...Some users just ask to be ridiculed!!!!!

Call Detail:

EU was away from the country for 1 year. When he left the printer has 95% of inks on all ink packs. His profilers shows 95%. However right now, all his ink pack are empty and he thinks it evaporated in to thin air. I told EU that this is not possible because of the property of the inks and that most likely he did not pinch his tubes nor position the ink packs properly on the printer which could have caused the break in vacuum and an ink leakage. He argues that he did everything correctly and do not see much of a leak of inks. I asked him if he examine his printer would he see ink spot as to where ink might have leaked. He told me no and he wanted compensation ($1600) for his 8 ink packs which he barely used that are now evaporated in to thin air. I told him I can not help him with that, he wanted to speak to a manager and said he will call and contact them himself.

Since he is in NV, may be the aliens used it as food :-)

Computer throws a hissy fit

I work for a computer shop in Australia. Our Tech support guys got a call that went something like this:

Can you come and take a look at my computer? It's been making this strange hissing sound, and today I went to turn it on, and it wouldn't turn on, but there was smoke.

To which tech support dutifully responded

Sure, we'll come take a look

Here's what they found:

2 Dead mice and a 14 inch black snake!

I was trying to determine whether or not this lady was connected to our ISP because she didn't know whether she was or not and she didn't know how many phone lines she had in her own house. So I was leading up to the question "do you see an icon that looks like 2 flashing computers in your system tray?"

Me: Ok see those icons by your clock?

Lady: I don't see a clock, it just shows the time

Me: uhh, ok *snicker* let's try *snicker* something else

In 1995 I worked as a programmer and often did tech support for a large call center in Florida. All the supervisors had recently received Windows, moving away from main frame terminals.

One of the supervisors called and said she was having problems with the new machine. The mouse wouldn't work. Whenever she used it the cursor just jiggled side to side but wouldn't go where she wanted it to. I said I'd take a look, but would be a bit. By the time I got out to her desk she was at lunch, but I checked it out and everything worked fine. I left a note saying so, and told her to call me if she had any more problems.

An hour later she called, having the same problem. Went out to her desk, and while she spoke to an operator moved it around without a problem and told her so. I asked her to show me what was happening. She put her hand on it and started clicking the buttons. "See. It won't move." I gently placed my hand over hers, and slowly moved her entire hand up, down, and side to side. She put looked down at her desl, gave a long sigh, and said "Please go away."

The company had issued new machines to everyonem taken away their terminals, given them Windows nachines, and training would be provided the following month?

I am a web developer/designer for a publishing company here in Nova Scotia, Canada, I was recently at work when I got a phone call from one of our clients. She explained that she was at a conference and needed help to set up a laptop to an external monitor and that they couldn't get an internet connection to work. I jumped into a cab and headed over to the conference only to learn that 3 other 'professional' IT technicians had been working at it for over 2 hours now and still nothing was working. After looking at the external monitor I noticed that it was connected to a box that allowed more than 1 monitor to be connected. After about 20 seconds I noticed that there was a power switch on the back that they had forgotten to switch on. First problem solved. Then I proceeded to try to get the internet connection working. I noticed that the LAN and WAN lights were lit up on the ADSL modem so I knew we were connected, but nothing would come up in IE or Netscape. I was able to successfully managed to get a ping and trace route but no websites would come up. Now this is where it becomes funny. You would think that these 3 IT guys would know a little about how the internet works but apparently not. I explained what the problem was, and how the sites wouldn't appear, but I was still getting a successful ping. The first guy suggests that maybe the modem wasn't working correctly. I told them once again that it IS working cause i'm getting packets. The second guy had to make the stupidest suggestion that I have ever heard a profession IT tech ask, and i quote, "Maybe you should re-install the drivers. I don't think the computer is recognizing the ethernet card." He said this right after I explained over 10 times that I had no problem getting a connection. After looking around on her computer for about 10 minutes, I noticed that she had installed third-party firewall software, but deleted the link from the desktop. After disabling the firewall everything worked fine. The IT techs then proceeded to walk away

and said, "if you need anymore help just give us a call" I almost hit them!!!

Ok, so I confess - I work for the Evil Empire (you know - it's got three letters in the name and it starts with an A...)

Over my time working here I've experienced a lot of calls, and the "quality" of people that we speak to varies from the smart cookies who know everything about computers, to complete muppets who shouldn't be allowed to own an abacus, let alone a computer.

It amazes me the number of people who don't know what the keys are on the keyboard. The tab key is something of a challange, although the shift key is the one that amazes me most. The number of people who think that the shift key is "That long thin button at the bottom of the keyboard" is just incredible, however, today I had one that took the ticket.

I was manually entering a modem string into the software, and told the member to type in the & sign - naturally, that meant explaining how to get the symbol up in the first place - ie- Hold down shift and press the number seven.

Simple enough, methinks....

Until I heard the modem trying to dial in my ear.

I asked the person I was speaking to which key he held down as the shift key, and his reply was "that funny shaped key on the right hand side of the keyboard".

So he'd held down the enter key, and it had confirmed and closed all the various windows, and then tried to dial...

Unfortunately the phone went dead at the point - not sure why tho'

Many years ago I started to work for a department and found that they had a 28000 baud modem set to send at 300 baud It seems that the old modem had been replaced a couple of year ago and no one had changed the software to use the fast speed that was used to transfer the database updates to command. The transfer of the update normally took 45minutes to a hour and a half at the slow speed so I check out the possibility that maybe the modem on the other side could only be a 300 baud modem and was told that they were the one that had sent out the newer modem so I changed the speed to 28000 baud after I change the settings the report took at the max 15 minutes to send The user was upsetting because she lost break time she had been using the time that the transfer took to take a informal break. There is more to the story.

It just happens that when I was transfer to the department it was to upgrade the whole department to a UNIX file server from a old 9600 IBM Main frame along with the upgrade the department was to get a Pair Gain connection to the Base LAN after the upgrade the same above transfer was to use the connect to transfer the file after the upgrade was done the transfer was completed in about 7 second needless to say this made the user MAD because of the fact that I had take away all of her informal break time.

I guess you can’t please everyone with more speed

An email address was not working for one of our users (they weren't getting any mail) so a call was put in. I'd completely forgotten about it until about two weeks later when the user had mentioned that they still were not receiving email at the specefied address. After following up with the helpdesk to see where things were at, I read the following from the trouble ticket (i've x'd out some bits to be nice :)

"**Email from xxx**

The email account (xxx)@xxx.ca does not seem to be receiving any email.

Helpdesk sent a test email and is waiting for a response

"

My father is no technical genius, but when he has a problem with his computer it's usually not too stupid (he has a Mac, so most of the really stupid problems are averted right there...)

However, the other day he tried to install Mac OS X 10.2, and his computer wouldn't boot from the installation CD. Off he rushes to find me...

10 seconds after arriving at the scene, I've solved the problem: I open the CD tray, take out the CD, replace it LABEL SIDE UP, close it, and off he goes into the land of Jaguar.

I was the unofficial tech geek and general "computer person" for my high school journalism class. Two of my favorites:

The entertainment editor (go figure) downloaded a thumbnail image of a movie poster, and then stretched it out to cover almost a quarter of a broadsheet page. She thought that the bloated pixels would look right when she printed. I don't know how or why, but the page actually went to press that way. (Maybe she convinced the journalism advisor that the printers could magically "fix it.") 1,500 papers with a hopelessly stretched and pixellated image taking up massive space on the entertainment page were distributed around campus two days later. Lovely.

A features writer (who took over editorials when I graduated-- I feel really sorry for that poor newspaper) was quite upset when, on deadline day, she couldn't find her story saved in her personal drive. (The school network had space set aside for students' work, known for no apparent reason as y-drives.) I came over to ask her where she had saved the file, and she said impatiently, "To my y-drive!" Which was utterly empty. No subfolders. Pristine, untouched space.

"When did you save?" Me, thinking the network might have hiccuped at the wrong time. It did that pretty often; our IT guy was almost as good with computers as the journalism class.

"I saved it last night."

"Last night? How late did you stay here?"

"No, I saved it to my y-drive at home."

"... You don't have a y-drive at home."

"My dad set it up for me! It was working!"

As it turns out, she had told her dad that she needed "a y-drive," so he kindly partitioned a little space for her and assigned it as Y:. I suspect that she thought Y: was some kind of web address, but it's hard to tell what (or if) they're thinking, sometimes.

How would it feel to be on the butt end of AOL support you ask??? I know exactly how it feels.

I work for U.S.Robotics technical support, and take on all queues, every day something new comes in from AOL, for example....

"while um online, muh email progrum freezez up, now I talked to AY OW ELL, and they determined that I need new drivers for muh modem, what ar drivers?"

-1st problem, if the user is already online, the modem drivers are already in use, plus the fact that AOL software in NO way relates to drivers.

"I can't connect to my AOL, but I can connect to my Juno....talked to AOL, and they says I need new modem drivers."

-Hmmmm, since when did home users need two connections? And simply said......STUPID ANSWER AOL!!!!

"I have a new modem from y'all...the Veeeeee Ninety-two one, and AOL says those modems cause registry problems, I can't connect, and AOL said to update my drivers."

-Noticing a trend? (btw...REGISTRY??!?! who the hell thunk that one up) I disabled V92, and they connected, he said he will call AOL and tell them how smart THEY WERE???

AOL has the claim to fame on being easy, but this is only for stupid people, and I am in 100% belief that AOL staffs people of who are intellectual equivalents of thier cutomers.

Just remember, if you have AOL 7.0, 8.0, or....AOL althogether, DON'T CALL YOUR MODEM MANUFACTURER.

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

A few years ago, I was accessing the internet through a local ISP. I live in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave desert, so the company was small and relatively new to internet service providing.

I get up one morning and try to get on the internet, but it gives me a username/password error. I retry three times, same problem. I wonder "What the hell now?" since this ISP has had problems before, and call tech support. Here's how the call went...

M = Me

T = Tech

T: Hello, welcome to ZZZZ, how can I help you?

M: Yeah, my name is XXXX, I'm calling from (ommited). My password isn't working. Can you check it for me?

T: Sure, what's your username and password?

M: Username is XXXX, Password is YYYY.

T: Okay, just a minute...

(Five minutes later)

T: Okay, it appears your password was changed. We had a little security problem here and changed the passwords on some of the accounts just to be safe.

M: Well, can I get my new password please?

T: I'm sorry, due to security reasons we don't give passwords out over the phone. We sent out E-Mails informing everyone of their new passwords, you should have gotten one.

M: Uh...ma'am, I can't check my E-Mail if I don't know my password.

T: Well, do you have an alternate E-Mail we can send it to if you can't check your XXXX@ZZZZ.com address?

M: That still wouldn't do me any good, because I- (she cuts me off)

T: Sir, a hotmail or yahoo account would be fine. You can create one in minutes.

M: Ma'am, without my password I can't connect to the INTERNET! (Becoming annoyed at this woman's obvious lack of intelligence)

T: Sir, you don't need to yell. If you can't access your XXXX@ZZZZ.com e-mail, then those are the only solutions. Is there anything else?

M: Yes, you're a $!*#ing moron...(Click)

I ended up having to drive 25 miles to their office to retrieve my password manually. I brought my laptop along just to make sure I wouldn't have to make another trip back if the one they gave me was wrong.

Some people are complete morons...

Having submitted a positive story aboout Microsoft (something quite out of character), it's only fair I submit a negative one as well:

A few months after upgrading to Win98 from Win95, I installed a game on my PC. The game crashed after running a few minutes, every time without fail. It did give an error message. I don't recal the wording, but it was somethign to do with the sound drivers or the sound card.

I had no tech support locally for that game and I dind't want to make an LD call, so I tried to fix it on my own (I know what you're thinking... read on).

First thing I did was look up inf on the sound card drivers I had installed. Second thing was to look for them on the web. I found them at the manufacturer's site. But the latest available were dated sometime in 95. I downloaded them anyway and installed them.

It worked! Not only did the game run well, some sounds which were absent before were present now.

What has MS to do with this?

Well,t he Win98 upgrade had replaced my original sound card drivers with newer versions made by MS.

So the MS-made upgrade didn't work as well as the older version.

I support a web site for my company. As with many companies, there is a Contact Us section with a form people can fill out to report a problem with the web site. Once in a while there actually is an error on the site, but for the most part I get the notes from lusers.

As part of the Contact Us form, one of the questions the luser is asked to answer is: "Did you receive an error message, and if so, what was it?"

One luser wrote:

"Umm. Maybe. I don't think so. It just acted as if I were dumb or something."

After laughing my head off, I showed this to one of the programmers and told him that I hadn't realized that he had programmed the site to be so perceptive.

Most people who visit here are pretty good with computers, but anyone of us can end up being a little forgetful at times.

This morning I was trying to swap the existing hard drive rack from my computer for a new one. The new one ended up being more trouble that it was worth, given that the mounting screws were impossible to get into the sides of the rack. Anyway, I eventually gave up and went back to the old rack. I put the drive back in, screwed the rack into the case, put the lid back on, and booted up the computer. Everything seemed fine until I tried to load Netscape. I got an error saying it can't find the temp directory H:\TEMP. I was puzzled by this, so I went and checked in Explorer, the 3 partitions on the second drive (the on e in the rack) were nowhere to be seen.

I then turned off the computer, and checked the drive was connected properly in the tray, no problems. I sat there wondering what had gone wrong, then I decided to open up the case, and lo and behold, I had forgotten to plug the cables into the drive rack when I put the old rack back in! Whoops!

This just goes to show that even those who are normally good with computers could do with a memory upgrade now and then. :-)

I work at the help desk for a reasonable sized company. We have our

share of stupid users, but the idiot in office number 42 takes the cake.

We get at least one call a week from this idiot, it is amazing the

number of problems he has, and most of them are because of him doing

something stupid. As a result, his Problem History file is 10 pages

long, and no, I am not kidding.

In the year he has been here (god knows why they hired him in the first

place), we have had to fix the following:

Twelve occurences of "the fonts have all gone", thanks to him playing

around with the colours.

Three wrecked floppy drives. One from him stapling a 3.5" disk to a

piece of paper (no idea how), which had some notes related to what was

on the disk. He then tore the paper off the disk and shoved the disk in,

wrecking the drive internals. The other two were from him getting his

credit card stuck under the shutter of a disk in his shirt pocket. When

he pulled the disk out with the card under the shutter, the card caught

on the inside of the drive and pulled the shutter off. We had to take

the drive apart to get the idiot's card out.

Four reinstalls of Windows from him "reorganizing" his files.

Another 3 from him messing around in Control Panel.

One from him finding Regedit and toasting his registry.

Six from him deleteing the wrong files when "cleaning up" his hard

drive. Four of which included deleteing files from the root directory.

Two reformats of his hard drive in Explorer.

Numerous counts of "I can't find my file", because he didn't pay

attention to where he saved it.

Too many calls of "my computer's crashed and I haven't saved my work!"

Five wrecked keyboards from him spilling his drink on them.

Thirteen problems which were all caused by various cables being

unplugged.

Numerous accounts of being unable to log on to the network. Solution:

turn off the damn Caps Lock.

Three incidents of him storing email in the "deleted mail" folder, and

wondering where it went 2 months later.

And, a "cup holder" story.

After reading this list, you can see why it's easy to tell who's

gotten a call from him by the loud groan.

The sooner they fire the idiot, the better!

Honestly! The stupidity is just too much!

Now I am on the phone with one of our site "techs". This fellow knows SQUAT!!!

He starts the conversation asking how one scans the harddrive with Norman Virus control. I ask him why, he replies he has opened a mail with an attachment (uh-oh!). He goes on to say that Norman has prompted him that it has found an advertisement (what the???) but was unable to remove it.

It takes me a couple of minutes searching for the problem in question on the web. It comes with removal instructions. I tell him at first he has to uninstall "WinSrv Reg" and Friends Greetings" from add-remove programs. He continues to ask where that is, and how to do that...

Great site, just found it via snopes. Refill the coffee and settle in for a sec; I'm verbose.

This story is set in late summer of 1999. I was working in one of the area's (Raleigh, NC) two large hospitals as a PC tech. As anyone reading who's worked in a hospital knows, it's not always easy.

Medical professionals, like many other "experts," seem to have this notion that expertise in one field automatically transfers to another field when necessary. So you get all kinds of interesting "power user" tricks, like trying to install a local ISP's proprietary dialer on a LAN, or trying to install MAC or **NIX packages on a windows machine. Inevitably, when something fries, it's the fault of the network, or the PC tech, or anything except the fact that the user was trying to pound square pegs into round holes. When something breaks nobody knows why (like they're afraid of being fired for an honest mistake); when something doesn't work it's always because the machine is crap or the network is crap or the techs are crap; you've always got one intransigent that absolutely HAS to have WordPerfect 2.2, Access 2.0, PC-SAS 6, and a FORTRAN compiler, all running on a TRS-80 Model III because "I have very important information on this machine that I can't lose!" It takes the patience of a saint sometimes to not start recommending "solutions" like you find at the BOF page ("Well, the problem is your hard drive has got particles all over it. If you take a magnet, remove the hard drive, open the case, and use the magnet to remove all those particles....")

One of my favorites was a OB third-shifter who installed AOL (5.0 at the time, I think) every night...on a hybrid NT-novell token-ring network. AOL, at that time anyway, installed a proprietary software "adapter" in your network hardware list; the results range from security holes to screwing the machine up by trying to have more than 4 adapters bound to TCP/IP, to (in one memorable instance) a shutdown of an entire network node, which took out every nurses station and office on that floor.

That one PO'd the CIO so much that he finally tracked the idiot down and had him fired.

I finally developed a set personal policy for dealing with doctors, nurses, and "experts" in general: after the third or fourth time I'm sent to fix their computer where they tried to put an AGP card in a PCI slot or some damned thing, I would gently admonish them with "I'll make you a deal boss - you don't open my computers, and I won't open your patients!" While a couple tried to get all haughty in response, most of them took it with good humor, and I usually ended up getting calls from them *before* they screwed something up afterwards.

Lots of people like to bitch about users, but it's not all their fault - it's up to us to get 'em trained right ;-)

Anyway, all that aside, I have to tell you about something that I don't think I'd believe if it hadn't happened to me. This beats any experience I've had with a user. In the interest of honesty, I've left my own mistakes in as well.

A call comes in from a floor nurse in the radiology department saying her "keyboard don't work." A pleasant enough woman, with a minor reputation for drinking LOTS of fluids, usually from a large (like, 55-gallon) styrofoam cup that she carried with her.

Well, okay, it's not exactly an industrial setting or anything, but sh*t happens, right? Figuring it more likely that a cable had been inadvertently pulled or something than an actual keyboard failure, or maybe an unscheduled move with someone not bothering to notice how all the connections are color-coded, I proceed to the workstation in question, several floors up, without a replacement.

Said workstation is at the w95 network login screen. I try to log in...sure enough, nothing happens when I hit the keyboard. Hm. Well, the computer's way under the desk, and I don't feel like climbing down there just yet, so I'll try a hard boot (not steel-toed) in case it's windows acting up (nothing running anyway, no danger of critical data loss). That way, if it's a keyboard problem, I should get an error right away during POST. (Yeah, right...)

I boot, and there's no keyboard error. Thinking I'd check the BIOS settings (you never know...), I hit the requisite F2 or DEL or whatever it was on that breed of HP...and nothing happens. The machine proceeds to boot normally, gets to the same place it was before, and seems to be working normally...except I can't type anything.

Well, harumph. Okay, we've got a room full of keyboards in the basement, let me just make sure it's plugged it (it was) to the keyboard port and not the mouse port (it was), yep, you got a dead keyboard. Just sit tight and I'll have your replacement in a jif...

So I truck back down to the basement (hospital IT departments always seem to be in the basement), grab a keyboard, bring it back up, chuck it on the desk.station, throw the cable around, go plug it in. Unplug the old one. Shoot the shiznit for a few seconds with the nurse while the 'puter boots (normally, and working fine), and I pick up the old keyboard, planning to take it downstairs and reinstall it to /dev/null...

...and as I life the keybard up by one corner, about three quarts of water come out of it on to the desktop.

In an absolutely stunning display of panache, the reasonably decent nurse, sipping her industrial-sized WATER from her large, lidless styrofoam cup says:

"I have NO idea how that happened!"

Yeah, I chose this career path because I'm a blithering idiot, sweetie, thanks!

I just walked off, chuckling with as much self-restraint as possible until I was out of earshot.

At our site we have a few people connected via ISDN lines to our terminal servers. In this country, you pay per minute use of the phone line. Naturally, whenever the bills arrive, with some users being less gifted, this can cause some interesting calls...

M: Me

U: User

M: Helpdesk, how may I help you?

U: Will you pay my phone bill?

M: Ummm. No, ma'am, I am afraid we do not pay your phone bill even if you work for us.

U: But ever since I got to work for you my phone bill has been tripled! And I have not been using the internet NOR the phone any more. I found out one number has been dialled over and over, and that this number is registered under (company name)

M: Yes, that i corect, that is the number to our servers

U: But I never called them! Do you mean it costs more tu use the internet when I work for you?

M: No ma'am, when you connect to our terminal servers(I used the universal name of the connection she opens)you use the phone line.

U: But I am not using the phone! And I am not using the internet

This went on and on for a couple of minutes, which seemed to last a couple of hours. She finally telled me she wanted to talk to someone who was able to do something, I stated she had reached the correct one, but if she wanted to go over my head, she was welcome to call my boss - which she did.

Later on, in our next meeting this was mentioned, and my boss seemed quite resigned. He had not been able to get her to understand the fact that she was using the phone whenever she (that being her router) called our server, and thus usewd money per minute.

This customer that I was supporting was originally suppose to send me an email but in this email (THAT SHE SENT!)she states she only has the internet, not email. (This brings up many questions.)

__________________________________________________________

I'm sorry but we do not have email on the computer we were discussing we only have the

internet.

Please give me a call.

(I assure you that this is real.)

Some of my home tech support stories.

My boyfriend often downloads pictures of a certain actor and if he cannot access some he can get into a fit of rage.

He had been ranting for days about a certain site where he could not see the images, had been asking for help in a forum and telling the sie owner hat her site was broken.

While he was raving about people not keeping their website in good order, I asked him for the name, lo and behold, lots of images. He then asked me to come over and find out why he could not see them.

We are both using Mozilla and... yes, of course. "Block images from this server" was on. I switched it of, quietly laughing and showed him his pictures.

15 Minutes later he was burning the lot and started ranting

that his burber was not burning. One look at the screen and for sure, there it was, jumping straight at you: "Simulate burn process only"

He had been simulating the burning process for days and not even noticed, just pressed the buttons as he had been taught and not once looking at the output.

You know, I think this is the reason why many man cannot cook, they will never read the instructions on the package. Said boyfriend once made himself instant soup and complained it was too salty. He had actually used one glass of instant broth that was enough for 6 litres with half a litre of water, just boiled up some water, dumped the glass in and wondered why all he got was plain, salty broth.

Years ago, around 1986 87 when screens were green and techs carried a soldering iron, I had a customer complaining of green dots appearing at random on her terminal, this being a proprietary mini system and a fair drive from the workshop I figured that the best way to tackle the problem as to swap the monitor and video card out. A few days later the customer called to say that they still had the same problem. We agreed that next time a tech was near we would change a few more bits. This done the problem persisted to the Point that I then asked the customer to call if she had red dots on the screen as they were easier to find. To this day I have no idea what was causing the problem

This happened at a place I worked at a couple of years ago. It was a division of a major telco company. We only had about 70 or so people that worked at our facility.

There was a new net admin (we'll call him Gary) hired to help the existing admin (we'll call him Bob). Gary was MCSE certified, so naturally the Bob thought he would be capable of installing WinNT on his own machine. Bob sat Gary down at his new computer with the disk and left.

30 minutes later, Bob came back to find Gary sitting in front of the computer staring at a screen that was prompting him to press OK. Gary seemed lost, so Bob went ahead and clicked on OK for him. Bob came back later to find Gary at another screen with an OK button. Bob clicked again and left. Needless to say, Bob had to keep coming every so often and pushing the correct button for Gary until the installation was complete. So much for MCSE certification.

I would like to say that Gary is not working there anymore, but he is. Bob eventually moved on to a job at Microsoft.

Gary was laid off at one point during a mass layoff at the company, but seeing as our division only had the one admin, they had to hire him back. They couldn't find anyone that would work for little as Gary got paid.

First things first: I work for a large ISP doing broadband tech support. We troubleshoot Connectivity, Email, Messenger...stuff like that.

I get a call today from a lady (english was not her first language) and it went something like this.

EU: When I turn on computer it go to safe mode and I get screen and can't click.

ME: Alright, so your computer boots you into safe mode automatically? Or are you going into safe mode on purpose?

EU: No, no, it off. Then it go to safe mode. Windows ME. I can't click and I get error

ME: Ok, ma'm I'm going to have you call your computer manufacturer or windows support so they can help you with that.

EU: NO! This only happen after you help me with computer.

ME: (look in previous ticket notes.) Okay, I show that the only other time you called into us was 2 weeks ago with the same issue you just explained to me and they told you to call your computer manufacturer.

EU: *silent*

ME: Ma'm, the issues you are having with your computer need to be resolved by a technician who is trained on Windows ME. Since I am internet tech support, I can't fix those issues and I need to have you call your OEM. Are you still under warranty for that computer?

EU: Don't know.

ME: When did you purchase the computer?

EU: I think a year ago.

ME: Okay, I will give you both the # for windows and the # for your OEM.

EU: Do I have to pay?

ME: I have one # for Win ME that charges for tech support and that is an 800#, the other # doesn't charge you for support, but it's long distance and if you're still under warranty, your OEM will have an 800# and will not charge you.

EU: I don't want to pay, this not happen until I call you.

ME: ?? I'm sorry, ma'm but I don't show that you have called us for technical support in the past.

EU: What is number that will not charge me?

ME: (gives her all 3 #'s)

EU: You're not helping me you know...*click*

ME: ........? Thank you for calling .... Tech support, have a great day.

Why is it alway the ISP that gets blamed for everything??

I work in a new elementary school which received a lot of technology when it opened. The schools which closed and combined when the new one opened didn't have a lot of technology and we didn't have a network, either. Most of the staff are technically challenged although a couple are more experienced (or so they think). While I'm actually the Library Technician, I'm often called on to help with computer problems as our area technician is only scheduled in the building for two half days a week. I can do some stuff, mostly software and checking out printer problems; if it's a hardware or network problem you gotta wait for the computer tech.

A couple of weeks ago, one of our "experienced" teachers (we'll call him T1) was inservicing another teacher (T2) on a certain program. They wanted to print something off of T2's laptop, but all the printer (located in my library) is spitting out is garbage. I ask T1 what's up. "Oh, I had to install the colour printer on her computer."

I look at the printout (now up to 4 or 5 pages) and I ask, "Did you install the right driver?"

T1: "Oh, yeah. I couldn't find it on her computer but we did get it installed. This must be the test page (indicating the printer)."

This has me curious, meanwhile we're all looking at the growing pile of printout and I'm fairly certain that he has NOT installed the correct printer driver as I've never seen a test page go on quite so long.

T2 adds at this point, "We put the *printer name* as the printer."

I recognise the name (which I can't remember right now) as the first one on the list in the "add printer" utility. I go to where they're working and look. Sure enough, wrong printer. I delete the printer he installed and then go about installing the correct driver for the printer that was wanted. T1 comes in and is watching me, and says again, "I couldn't find the printer on her computer." I'm not paying a lot of attention to him and didn't understand what he meant. I get the printer set up and it works fine, although we have about 20 pages of wasted paper and toner from his first attempt.

Later I relised what T1 was talking about when he said he couldn't find the printer on the computer. Some of the computers in the school have some of the printer drivers available over the network. He was used to just clicking on the printer he wanted and having it magically d/l and install itself. As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Oh, and later that morning, they called the area technician over to install a program on T2's comp--something they should have checked out _before_ starting the inservice. Let's just say our tech was not impressed...

More tomfoolery from the Demon Database Developer

This is again set in my previous role as a programmer. I was covering helpdesk that morning due to a large number of our support staff calling in sick (office party the night before).

Me: Myself (and my thoughts in brackets)

(l)user: The idiot on the end of the phone

Me: (Standard opening spiel) How may I help you?

(l)user: I've spilt tea on the system!!!!

Me: (???????)

(l)user: Hello?! Aren't you going to help?

Me: I think you have the wrong number sir, may I suggest you call your I.T support or computer manufacturer

(l)user: But you are my computer manufacturer

Me: Sir, we are not a computer manufacturer, we make software, not hardware

(l)user: Whatever (I HATE it when people say that!!), just fix it, it's throwing sparks everywhere!

Me: Unplug the computer!

(l)user: Can't I just use a heater to dry it off?

Me: I would strongly recommend you unplug the computer, water and electricity do NOT mix!

(l)user: Whatever, look (goes on a ramble about how he was using our software when he spilt tea all over his MONITOR!! So we should fix it)

Me: (drawing breath to calm down) Sir, I..

*Noise in Background - BANG!!!*

(l)user: Oh great - it's blown up!!

Me: *ROTFLMAO*

(l)user: (Click)

Couldn't believe it - neither could my boss (head of programming) who was working on the desk next to me. Had to go outside for a cig break after that one.

>From the Demon Database Developer.

Thankfully I didn't take this call (I was busy coding that day - headphones on, Pink Floyd playing - ahhhhhhh) but one of our Techs did.

For background, the only software our company produced was extremely expensive and complicated student records processing software which would run on NT, Unix, Linux and the dreaded 98 and 2000 versions of windows.

Bearing that in mind...

Man rings up, our Tech gets his software code (unique number issued to each piece of software so we can tell which user is which), yes this guy is a customer. Our Tech prepares to listen to more tales of processing gone wrong, but oh no......

Man: Why won't this thing let me surf the net????

Tech: I'm sorry sir? Are we still talking about **** software?

Man: Yes! I brought this to help me surf the net!

Tech: Let me get this clear sir, you have brought £200,000 worth of STUDENT RECORDS software to surf the net with??

Man: Well, no, but our copy of A*L isn't working and my boss said your software would do it, now how do I set it up?

Tech: I think you need to call A*L sir, our software is not able to dial into the internet.

Man: Well, what use is it then? (click)

Apparently, he was one of these guys who believes that if it's software and on the computer then it's to do with the internet! Whole tech team was in fits after that one, and they made 2 programmers (myself included) spit our tea out all over our desks when they related the tale later...

I work at a call center for a major international IT company (yep, the big blue one...) I don't do tech support but we do get calls for tech support and take their problem description or we can order parts for them.

One morning a lady calls in saying she has a problem with her keyboard and wants to order a new one so I figure it's probably covered under warranty and offer to place her to tech support... she declined... this is how the convo went.

Me - Me

Cx - Customer

Me - Thank you from calling *** General Services, my name is mr_dom, how may I assist you today.

Cx - Hello, I have a problem with my keyboard, can I order a replacement.

Me - I can put you through to the technical support line, they would be able to arrange a warranty replacement.

Cx - No, can't you do it for me? (slightly embarrased voice)

Me - Well Ma'am, I can find the Field Replacement Unit number and order it for you with our part dept. But that would be billable.

Cx - (kinda choked up) I'll pay.

Me - Ma'am, may I ask what happened to the keyboard, it may be covered under warranty.

Cx - (trembling voice) I'd rather not say.

Me - Ma'am, please believe me when I say I've seen it all and heard it all.

Cx - Promise you won't laugh?

Me - Yes ma'am, I promise I won't laugh.

Cx - Well, my cat likes to sit on the desk while I'm at the computer, and sometimes he strolls onto my keyboard for attention... and yesterday, he ummmm... you know.

Me - (after about 15 secs of uncontrollable laughing, god bless the mute button) I'm sorry ma'am, I don't know... could you describe the problem?

Cx - Well, you know... went...

Me - (after another minute of laughing and now 3 co-workers stand around) Went where? He didn't go outside and you lost him? I really love cats and I don't like hearing about lost cats.

Cx - (almost crying) No, I didn't loose poor snugglekins... He urinated onto my keyboard.

Me - (we all lost it completely and she was muted for over a minute) Ma'am, I'm sorry cat urine is (snicker) not covered under any warranty, I'm afraid that the order will be billable.

So, on went the call, and I ordered a replacement keyboard for her and had a hell of a laugh at her expense... Why didn't she just say she spilt coffee on it or something???

I work for a fortune 500 IT company on a helpdesk account who supports a around 15,000 users. I recently had the hilarious occasion of receiving a call from another helpdesk ran by this company. WHERE DID THEY GET THESE PEOPLE? Keep in mind we are in the process of deploying a new OS to all of these people. Some are still on the NT, until they are upgraded.

The conversation went like this:

Me (M)

Other Helpdesk (H)

M: Hi, this is *Sally from the ABCD Helpdesk, how may I assist you.

H: This is Jim from ABCDE helpdesk. I have a customer on the line who we do not support, but you may be able to.

M: Okay, Jim what is the name and site number of this customer?

H: Huh? I only have the user ID.

M: Okay, I will just have to look them up (DUMB !$%$#^%#$^)

M: Jim, what OS are they on?

H: OS?

M: yes, operating system....

M: Are they on NT?

H: no, they are on Windows 97.

M: Windows 97? Umm... are you sure?

H: Yes, pretty sure.

M: (Push the mute button-- HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!) Jim, I don't think they could be on Windows 97.

H: Yes, I am 99% sure that is what they said.

M: Well, (trying not to laugh in his ear) unless ABCDE company paid BIG BIG bucks to have Microsoft design that for them, then I highly doubt that.

H: I am sure that they had to pay something, because there are almost 100,000 users on it.

M: Jim, go ahead and bring the user on. BTW.. There is no such thing as Windows 97!!!

What an idiot! ;-)

I work for a large IT company on a helpdesk account with about 15,000 (L)users. Our primary email communication is completed with Lotus Notes. If you are familiar with Notes, this will be hilarious.

L: (L)user calling in

M: me

M: Thanks for calling ABCDE helpdesk, may I have your name and site to assist you?

L: My name is *Susie, I am at site *6573132.

M: What can I do for you?

L: I don't have a bird in my Lotus notes.

M: Excuse me? I don't quite understand.

L: My bird is missing in Lotus Notes. Jane next to me has it on her Lotus Notes, but I do not.

M: Ma'm , Where are you missing a bird in Lotus notes?

L: When I open Lotus Notes and type all of those x's there is not a yellow bird.

M: ( At this point I am rolling) Okay, I think I understand now. Are you at your password prompt to access your mail file?

L: Yes, I am trying to open up my mail and there is no bird.

M: ( FYI... when typing in your password in Notes, each character typed has a representative hieroglyph. One happens to be a bird.) Ma'm.. your password is probably different than the person next you. SO, you will not see the bird. You would have to type the exact character sequence in order to see the same characters that she does.

L: So... I need to have the same password as her to have a bird?

M: yes, basically that is it. Or you need to determine which character set represents a bird and then you will have one also.

L: Can you tell me that?

M: No,I am sorry. I do not know the exact character set for that.

L: Oh, I guess I don't have to have a bird.

M: Probably not, It won't affect your work in any way.

L: okay, thanks.

THESE PEOPLE HAVE WAY WAY WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS!!!!!!!

My dad is an Arson and Explosives Detective for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and nearly grounded me when he overheard me talking about burning some CDs.

ok i've been reading from this site for about 2 months now (the length of time I've been doing tech support and getting paid for it) I work for a large isp in the states and today got the funniest call.

M=me C=customer

M:opening lines

C:Is it normal to have to connect to the internet to send email?

M:(holding back laughter) Why, yes it is.